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MENS CHRISTI 



OTHER PROBLEMS 11 THEOLOGY 



AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



JOHN STEIN FOET KEDNEY, D. D. 

Professor OP Divinity in Seabury Divinity School; Author op "Hegel's 

Esthetics," "Christian Doctrine Harmonized," "The 

Beautiful and the Sublime," Etc. 



CHICAGO: 
S. C. GEIGGS AND COMPANY. 

1891. 



^ 



^ 



i^ 



Copyright, 1891, 
By S. C GRIGGS & COMPANY. 



PllESS OF KNIGHT, LEONARD & CO., CHICAGO. 



PEEFACE. 



The first five of the Lectures in this 
volume were delivered in December, 1890, 
before the students of the '' Episcopal Theo- 
logical Seminary " at Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts, and others, at the request of the 
Trustees of that Institution. The topics were 
selected as such in which it was thought 
that Theology as a unified system was capable 
of and might receiA^e development and ad- 
vance ; or as touched practical questions of 
moment, and under discussion at the present 
day. 

The sixth lecture was delivered in the year 
1889 before the '' Summer School of Theology" 
at Sewanee, Tennessee, and has been printed 
in the '' Magazine of Christian Literature " for 
November, 1890. It is here appended as 
opening up a fruitful subject for further 
treatment. 

August, 1891. 



coNTE:r^TS. 



LECTURE I. 

The question of Jesus' knowledge, and 
of inspieation, as affected by the 
doctrine of the kenosis . . . 1. 

LECTURE 11. 
The doctrine of atonement . . .33 

LECTURE III. 

The possibilities of the future, as de- 
termining the mode of human moral 
activity 66 

LECTURE IV. 

The functions of the christian ministry 105 

LECTURE V. 

The doctrine of ''A nature in God" . 140 

LECTURE VI. 

The impotence and the right use of 
imagination in dealing with chris- 
tian doctrine 168 



LECTURE L 

THE QUESTION OF JESVS' KNOWLEDGE, AND 
OF INSPIRATION, AS AFFECTED BY THE 
DOCTRINE OF THE KENOSIS.* 

The question has arisen afresh in our day 
of the extent of the knowledge of Jesus Christ 
before his death ; or, as some minds state it 
to themselves, the extent of his ignorance. 
This is an old question, and on some occasion 
or other, and in some shape or other, has 
come up frequently in the history of Christian 
thought. We are reminded of the controver- 
sies and struggles of the early days, through 
which the Christian church found itself, at 
length, able and authorized to asseverate, in 
terms, the doctrine of our Lord's true human- 

* One reason why this was selected as the topic for a lecture was the stir 
made among theologians by the appearance of the Rev. Mr. Gore's article on 
Inspiration in the book entitled ''Lux Mioidi.'' But I wrote the lecture 
before reading the article, that my own treatment might be more dispassion- 
ate. I found in Mr. Gore's disquisition much to sympathize with, and some 
things to criticise. Those who read both will see that I have gone into the 
matter more deeply, and have attempted an analysis that it did not come 
within his immediate design to make. The whole subject receives larger 
treatment in chapters 18, 19, 20 and 23 of the second volume of my work 
"Christian Doctrine Harmonized." in which last chapter, likewise, will be 
found the true philosophy of Christian prayer and a vindication of the thesis 
that the entire cosmic movement is ruled by the requirements of God's moral 
government, in which alone is its final cause. 

1 



Z MENS CHRISTI. 

ity. The need which was first apparent in 
those times to affirm against all impugners the 
doctrine of his divinity had led many, in order 
to maintain it, to ignore, or not to perceive, 
what was essential in the definition of his 
humanity ; and only step by step were those 
forms of doctrine fenced off which virtually 
denied his humanity by impairing the notion 
of what essential humanity is. And the diffi- 
culties for the mind which are found in the 
entire problem, wherein contrasts have to be 
reconciled, have always induced a predisposi- 
tion to cut short the enquiry by emphasizing 
the Divinity to such an extent as to lose sight 
of the truth that there was and must have been 
a kenosis, or limitation of the divine element 
in Jesus' personality, or to pare away this latter 
doctrine unduly. Thus, then and ever since, 
there has been manifest a disposition to fall 
back upon the monophysitic ground, and to 
make assertions, if which are true, the doctrine 
of his humanity has undergone degradation, 
and thereby the definition of his divinity 
itself has been impaired, as I shall presently 
proceed to show. 

But the conciliar decisions of the church are 



MENS CHRISTI. 



with us in this statement. They will bear the 
scrutiny of speculative thinking, and may on 
this account be safely trusted, as well as because 
they represent the clarified Christian con- 
sciousness, and thus have objective authority. 
These, in terms suited to the exigencies of their 
times, declared the doctrine of our Lord's com- 
plete humanity, and defined it against the 
immediate impugners. But humanity cannot 
be defined in few words, and new and subtle 
enquiries still started up ; and as each age had 
to do its own thinking to appropriate that of its 
predecessors, the disposition still remained to 
torture the definition of his humanity to fit the 
supposed requirements of his divinity, and it 
remains still. Not a year passes in which may 
not be found in the religious periodicals utter- 
ances, honestly meant to do honor to our Lord 
Christ, which are only self-consistent on the 
presuppositions of a monophysitic scheme of 
doctrine, and, in some cases, those of the Nesto- 
rian scheme. This question, then, of the 
extent of Jesus' knowledge, or the extent of 
his ignorance (since it has to be answered so far 
as is needfuLto avoid the difficulties in the way 
of reaching a harmonized theologic system), 



4 MENS CHRISTI. 

requires for its elucidation and sufficient reply 
that we bring up for examination afresh the 
doctrine of his humanity on the one side, and 
on the other the doctrine of kenosis, or the 
self-limitation required for the Incarnation. 

Man is a spiritual soul — as soul related to 
the material universe, as spiritual soul related 
to pure spirit — thus related on the one side to 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as pure spirit, 
and on the other side to the Divine Doxa, as 
synthesized by spirit. As made in the image 
of God, and his highest possible creature, he is 
morally free, and comes, sooner or later, to 
know himself to be all this. Allowing every- 
thing else to determinism, he is his own creator 
as to the moral form, and must come up to all 
the requirements of a moral being. To attain 
real freedom, and the perfect liberty required 
for a permanent form of life, he must undergo 
development, in which his own will is an effi- 
cient. He rises out of the abyss of the uncon- 
scious, quickened by a divine act, and is at the 
start immortal, because he is moral, and has to 
determine his moral status during his develop- 
ment, which is both physical and mental as 
well as moral, all these three elements of it 



MEXS CHRISTI. 5 

conditioning each other. Thus his knowledge 
is a gradual growth, conditioned by all these 
relations. It follows and is graded by his 
experience, and constitutes the light by which 
he frames motives or ends which determine his 
activity and hence his moral form. These deci- 
sions of will affect immediately the content of 
his consciousness, and remotely, and perhaps 
immediately, too, his ph^^sical being. These, 
then, as well as the parallel social changes, 
become part of his environment, and thus make 
more complex the conditions under which his 
moral history proceeds. By the use of his 
freedom the content of his intelligence is 
affected. It would not be difficult to show that 
by his moral recession, or wrong choice of ends, 
his being is impoverished and narrowed, and 
that by his right choice and moral advance it 
is enriched and amplified. His knowledge, 
then, must be affected accordingly. In the one 
case, some springs or possibilities of knowledge 
may dry up ; in the other case, they may be 
loosened to flow more freely ; or new ones may 
be started, and latent possibilities quickened to 
become realities. In the case of the right 
moral progress, the knowledge clarifies itself, 



MENS CHRISTI. 



and becomes truer and truer. Retrogressions 
become less and less likely or possible. The 
avenues of his complex soul-structure, through 
which any subtle, mystical influences may 
reach him, become freer and freer. Thus he is 
gradually enabled to hold all essential truth in 
proper synthesis. The vibration between the 
a priori evidence for the postulates of his moral 
consciousness and history, for the '' things 
unseen," on the one hand, and, on the other, 
the a posteriori doubts which the sensuous 
understanding presents (which vibration consti- 
tutes his trial, and measures the degree of his 
faith), still remains as the condition for its own 
ultimate subsidence ; that is, the victory of faith 
at length carries the subject beyond the need of 
this trial and struggle, and the vibration slowly 
subsides. Yet his trials, and the consequent 
need of his interior vigor, may grow more 
intense and require the uttermost exercise of 
his persistence toward the end, and thus, by this 
triumphing persistence, the final influx of vigor 
is reached, as the condition for the removal of 
all his doubts and trials. 

If this be a definition of humanity, and so 
far a description of the essential human career, 



MENS CHRISTI. l 

and man's ideal destiny so far as the sojourn on 
earth is concerned, the Son of God, in becoming 
human, must have become, must have passed 
through, all this. If he missed anywhat that 
is to befall one whose moral development pro- 
ceeds without retrogression, that is, is sinless, he 
missed what is highest and finest in humanity, 
and cannot • be thought to have been truly hu- 
man. To suppose in him the full divine con- 
sciousness at the start is to deny the fact of his 
human development, or give it a Doketic form. 
He no longer appears in what is the highest hu- 
man characteristic, and our sense of fellowship 
with him is lost. To suppose that the divine 
element led along passively the human, is again 
to degrade the latter, and loAver our conception 
of the former. The Incarnation shows, in its 
highest definition, as an exhibition of the di- 
vine love, rather than as an exhibition of the 
divine power. And this love is shown in his 
self-limitation, which made his sacrifice of him- 
self possible. Hence his knowledge, to be a 
true human knowledge, must have been at- 
tained, as ours is attained, through human or- 
gans, and have been, as ours, a gradual growth. 
He must have passed through every phase of 



O MENS CHRISTI. 

human consciousness^ except as it has been 
modified by the contradiction, — even the in- 
fantile one, where empirical knowledge exists 
not, — and all the stages whereby the results of 
sensation, perception, conception and compre- 
hension are wrought up into knowledge. Infor- 
mation as to facts and events must have been 
gained as ours is gained, and through the same 
media. He was determined by heredity, through 
his mother, and thus retains organic connec- 
tion with the human race, and is a part of its 
history. He was determined also by his en- 
vironment, as we are, and showed the results of 
it in his mode of speaking. His education and 
experience were those of a Jew. 

To think that all this was pretended, or a dis- 
guise, and that the full divine consciousness 
existed beneath, and that omnipotence was vol- 
untarily refrained from exercise, is, again, either 
Doketism or a form of Nestorianism. The hu- 
man consciousness is either pretended, or exists 
side by side with the divine one, and we have 
a double personality and no true union. 

If, then, his empirical knowledge was gained 
as ours is, how rash is it for anyone to say that 
it was unlimited, or to make any arbitrary limi- 



MENS CHRISTI. 9 

tation ; as those do who declare that ignorance 
can only be predicated of him as pertaining to 
the few occasions when he confessed it. They 
who do so cannot explain why it should have 
been confined to these particulars alone ; and if 
they fall back upon the a priori assumption that 
his divinity must be thought as requiring in 
him unlimited knowledge, then his divine con- 
sciousness must have been willfullv darkened, 
and the honesty of his declaration must under- 
go suspicion. It would be just as valid an ar- 
gument or assertion for one who declares the 
contrary to fall back upon the <z priori ground 
of his humanit}^, and ask to be shown how any 
superhuman knoAvledge was possible unless by 
dividing his consciousness and thinking him as 
living a double life. It is as valid to assume 
his human ignorance as it is to assume his 
divine omniscience. Both assertions are shal- 
low, and the profounder problem is to show 
how far the divine consciousness has under- 
gone limitation, and how far the human has 
undergone modification, expansion and exal- 
tation, and to reconcile these in a consistent 
synthesis, if possible. 

The endeavor may be well meant to do honor 



10 MENS CHRISTI. 

to our Lord as divine by all this insistence upon 
the scantily limited extent of his knowledge ; 
but it fails of its end, for, as before, his divinity 
appears in a profounder definition and comes 
nearer to our hearts by the limitation than by 
the exhibition of omniscience. It is shown not 
so clearly by the divine aloofness — for as omni- 
potent God is still far off — as by his nearness, by 
his lovingly submitting to human conditions, 
for in this region man may meet him. Our 
power is borrowed, and may shrink into non- 
entity, but our love is immortal and may be 
boundless, when called forth by the Divine 
Love. Moreover, love in its perfection is creative. 
It must go beyond itself As the mutual recog- 
nition of the Father and the Son shows love for 
the first, in thought, existing, it is at once, in 
thought, active, whereby the Holy Spirit eter- 
nally proceeds, and a universe may issue. So 
when love in its purity and perfection in man, 
responsive to the love of God, comes to be, it, 
too, is creative ; which is what St. Peter meant 
when he said that we should share the divine 

But there is another side to all this argu- 
ment concerning the knowledge of Jesus. While, 



MENS CHRISTI. 11 

on the one hand, his knowledge was human and 
gained through the same media as ours is, it 
was more than simply human, was ideally hu- 
man, and thus, in a sense, superhuman. It is 
not to be denied that there is a Charybdis on 
the other side of this Scylla, and that we may 
contemplate in thought his humanity so ab- 
stractly as not to see that it was modified at the 
start by the entrance of divinity into human 
development. Here now, and for the first, 
occur any real difficulties in the endeavor to 
reach satisfying conclusions. 

There is no room here for the exhibition of 
the grounds upon which it must be held as 
axiomatic that the consciousness of the Eternal 
Son, as such, Avas unbroken ; that the conscious- 
ness of his relation to the Eternal Father, and 
of himself as undergoing kenosis by the limi- 
tation of the transcendent attributes of omni^ 
science and omnipotence, was perennial, was a 
thread of unbroken continuity. Hence that, 
as such, it existed ab initio, and at the lowest 
stage of human development. Nor is there 
room for the elaboration of the thesis that in 
the rudimentary consciousness of the quickened 
human germ — in the primal sensations felt as 



12 MENS CHRISTI. 

internal change, yet soon discovered to be im- 
parted ah extra — there is implicit the principle 
of causality, afterward to be recognized as the 
governing law in all mental activity and his- 
tory, which cannot be escaped from, and which 
is the substratum from which arises the knowl- 
edge and thegrowing idea of God. 

Postulating these, we find ourselves obliged 
to think, or assume, the coalescence, in the 
incarnation of the Eternal Son, of the divine 
consciousness with the rudimentary human 
one, thus conserving the unipersonality, — the 
Divine being thus limited to the uttermost of 
the possibility of its limitation. But from this 
very coalescence the pure rudimentary con- 
sciousness of the infant must receive modi- 
fication. We may think, then, that the infantile 
recognition of a power ah extra (for the sim- 
plest sensation is not self-caused, and is there- 
fore still ah extra), when thus affected by the 
coalescence with it of the Divine, assumes the 
form of felt and responsive love. Thus what is 
most divine is retained, and there is no break 
in its continuity, by the Eternal Son taking 
human form. We may think, too, that even 
though all empirical knowledge be wanting, 



MENS CHRISTI. 13 

the impetus and the ruHng idea, and the final 
cause of all creation, by means of wliich alone 
all empirical knowledge is explained, and 
has any permanent significance, is felt and is 
an element in sucli consciousness. Here, in- 
deed, understanding, or rather imagination, the 
reproductive power, using the material of 
empirical knowledge, is impotent, since we can- 
not transport ourselves into the infantile con- 
sciousness. But thus much remains for pure 
thought, and of the consciousness of the child 
Jesus we can think that the Eternal Son knows 
himself as loved by and loving the Eternal 
Father ; and since having from love undergone 
limitation, and the obscuration of knowledge, 
or rather the reduction of it to its primal form, 
still knows himself as loving the universe, re- 
garded in its fundamental meaning ; and as 
love was the impetus of its creation, and real- 
ized love its final cause, thus knows himself as 
its upholding principle. To trace the illumi- 
nation of the developing infantile conscious- 
ness by this divine modification, in the preser- 
vation of the unipersonality, must, as I have 
said, elude comprehension or trustworthy imagi- 
native reproduction, but it can be thought — 



14 MENS CHRISTI. 

yet it must be so thought as to involve no con- 
tradiction, and still to retain Avhat is essential 
to the idea of the human. Here we have the 
ideally human as well as the actually human, 
the latter coming before our vision, the former 
held in pure thought. It is forbidden to think 
that in the Incarnate One the powers of the 
human were transcended. That is concealed 
Monophytism, again. But the latent and possi- 
ble powers of the human are availed of ; and it 
is seen in Jesus of what humanity is capable, 
and we have a unique form of consciousness, 
which we call divine-human. The moment 
one endeavors to ' make predications concerning 
it at any point of his career, the temptation is 
very great to trust to one's understanding, or 
to follow a logical process, without the needful 
dialectic ; and hence we may have dogmatic 
assertions concerning our Lord's consciousness 
which are entirely unauthorized. At the best, 
he must seem to us something of an enigma, 
but one finally to be solved, and the solution 
will be gained step by step. 

His knowledge, then, before his death, can- 
not be thought as perfect, if it was attained, as 
all human knowledge is, in the course of 



MENS CHRISTI. 15 

human development. Hence his confession 
that there is not present in his mind the in- 
tended career through which his Father is 
leading him, and he can pray that the cup 
may pass from him ; and he cannot put in 
chronological sequence and fill up the details 
of what is to be passed through before the final 
consummation. Had he had intuition of this, 
his loving sacrifice and spiritual strength would 
have been less, and we could not love him as 
we do. Our very notion of his divinity would 
be loAver than it is. 

But while, like ours, his empirical knowl- 
edge was a growth, and therefore deficient 
until the last, there must also have been in him, 
perennially, a form of knowledge deeper and 
truer than our actual knowledge. His intui- 
tion of the divine idea, the one purpose which 
runs through and unifies all history, the inner 
meaning of all change or development, and the 
key to read it aright, was true, incessant and 
infallible, and did not require anything to be 
rethought. This would seem almost a corollary 
from the fact of the sinless outook. The dis- 
torting mists which arise out of the abyss of 
unlovingness are not present here. He may 



16 MENS CHRISTI. 

not have known every event of the world's 
history, but when it was understood, he knew 
infalhbly its inner meaning ; and this not as 
the absolute divine omniscience, but as knowl- 
edge possible for human faculties when sancti- 
fied and purified. In this wisdom, which is more 
than knowledge, we have no warrant for saying 
that it was ever deficient. His mind may have 
been darkened so far as it was understanding, 
as we learn by his utterances in Gethsemane 
and on the cross, but so far as it was the pure 
reason clarified by love, there is no evidence 
that there was ever any defect. Hence we 
refer to his words as the words of God in every- 
thing pertaining to man's true essential life. 
They are for us a refuge from all human obscu- 
rations, and deeper than our excogitated phi- 
losophies. We weary of what these say, but 
never of what he said. They are the food 
and the fountain of our spiritual strength. 

This intuition of the idea which rules the de- 
velopment of the universe, and which need not 
be, in human progress, necessarily accompanied 
by exhaustive or even far-extended empirical 
knowledge, is a true philosophic attitude, 
which, when clothing itself in language to satis- 



MENS CHRISTI. 17 

fy one's own understanding or that of others, 
and to gratify the imagination, becomes the po- 
etic attitude. We see it illustrated in the mental 
procedure of the world's great poets, and nota- 
bly in the instance of Dante. Here we have all 
the empirical knowledge of his time, ruled by 
the categories of time and space, used as sym- 
bolic of the abstract moral or religious con- 
dition of man. It is the thought veiled beneath 
events expressed in symbol. 

Thus, too, Jesus' descriptions of the prospec- 
tive ruin of Jerusalem, and, in the same con- 
nection, of the events which are to occur at 
the period of the final consummation, are used 
as symbols of the idea or process of judgment, 
or discrimination and separation. This is the 
poetic attitude, which is so far identical with 
the prophetic attitude, in whose utterance, gen- 
erally, language breaks down and shows its in- 
adequacy. Language is the offspring of the 
material universe, so far as it has come within 
our knowledge, and not until that knowledge 
is perfect will language ever be an infallible 
mode of expression, and enable for others the 
full intuition of the idea. 

When, concerning the knowledge or the in- 



18 MENS CHRISTI. 

tuitions of Jesus, we use the word inspired, if 
we mean to adhere to the strict meaning of the 
word, we do not mean by it the direct divine 
omniscience, mechanically or otherwise im- 
parted, but knowledge that is mediated by the 
Holy Spirit acting upon the human organs of 
knowledge ; and this suggests another effort of 
thought to discover, if possible, the mode of 
the Holy Spirit's mediation, and how human 
knowledge is or may be affected thereby. If 
we cannot reach full satisfaction here, we may, 
at least, find what it is not, and therefore 
within what limits we must think. 

If Jesus passed through human development 
it was moral and religious as well as mental 
and physical. Postulating his innocence or 
sinlessness, his moral development would con- 
sist in the acquisition of spiritual strength, and 
for this it would be needful that he should 
undergo and resist temptation. And as moral 
experience, on analysis, proves to have religious 
implications, his development was also religious. 
The motive spring of his moral obedience was a 
religious one. It was love responding to the 
love of the Father and proving that it was this 
by overflowing upon the human race. That it 



IX8PIRATI0N. 19 

was religious is proven b}^ his constant prayer- 
ful attitude towards the Almighty Father. 
What was in his mind during these frequent 
communions with the Father we are not told. 
His uttered prayers were such as his disciples 
could understand, and we see that these, and 
hence we may infer that all his prayers were 
related both to the providential and to the mys- 
tical processes of the divine government. He 
could pray for relief from suffering, and he 
could pray for the grace needful to sustain him 
in bearing it. The gift of such grace is the ac- 
tivity and influence of the Holy Spirit. His 
disciples pray similarly for providential change, 
and for mystical influence, for the light and aid 
and comfort of the Holy Spirit. If this influ- 
ence is mystical, i.e. beneath understanding, 
through what media does it reach us, and what 
is the limit possible for analysis here ? 

We are accustomed, in our Christian theology, 
to refer all exercise of energy in the movement 
of the physical universe to the Holy Spirit. Its 
mechanical, chemical and vital motions and 
changes are all referable to the same source. In 
the incoming of every new idea, superinduced 
upon the antecedent ones, the new one avails 



20 MENS CHKISTI. 

of all former ones, and subdues them, and the 
forces they display, to realize its own end or final 
cause. Thus the chemical overrules the me- 
chanical movement, and the vital movement 
subdues or suspends for a time both the others. 
We have valid ground for affirming that the 
moral movement dominates all three, and con- 
quers all the system of lower forces to its own 
end. But I will not enter into that argument 
now and here.* Slowly all these movements 
and their correlations come before our appre- 
hension and become knowledge. But the pri- 
mal energy which starts and sustains them all, 
dividing itself into forces, or modes of motion, 
whose contests and equilibria make all con- 
crete things and their changes, is one and 
the same, can be traced back to nothing else 
than to pure will and idea, and therefore can- 
not come within the categories of the under- 
standing. We see the activity of the Holy 
Spirit by its result, from which we are obliged to 
infer it ; but we can only imagine it by think- 
ing the power to use or direct the forces, of 
which we possess a little, and which is ruled by 
our will, to be unlimited. What we have may 

*See Chapter xxiii, Vol. 2, in my work ' Christian Doctrine Harmonized." 



INSPIRATION. 21 

be lost, but the abstract power cannot be lost, 
for this would be to think away all existence. 

If, then, the energy ruling the motions of 
the physical universe is thus mystical and 
eludes the understanding, any exercise of it for 
a higher end, to produce moral and religious 
change, must be also mystical, and be only seen 
in its results. All Christians declare that there 
are such results, discoverable in their charac- 
ters, their motives, their strength, their 
emotions. And Christianity, and all it has 
wrought in the world and for the individual 
man, is such a result. The Holy Spirit, then, 
must work upon the existing ground, the 
complex of forces, which in a degree we know, 
to accomplish the higher end. The intent and 
purpose is to strengthen the moral and religious 
will, and carry on the process which is to result 
in moral or religious perfection. Through what 
media is this influence wrought? Through 
which of the constituents of humanity is the 
end reached, — through the abstract physical, 
or the abstract mental, or the abstract emo- 
tional, or if through all three, in what order ? 
What modification of the consciousness is pos- 
sible to accomplish this required strength of 



22 MENS CHRISTI. 

will, and by what processes is it thus modified ? 
Is it (1) something utterly apart from all pre- 
vious modes of energy, superadded to them, 
and hence entirely inexplicable ; or (2) does 
it operate in and through these, and is so far 
identified with them ; or (3) are the two 
co-ordinated and together constitute the activ- 
ity ? These questions may, perhaps, be better 
understood by presenting a concrete case, which 
will suggest these enquiries. If a Christian man 
prays for light and strength, for ability to see 
what his duty is, and for strength to adhere to 
it, how is such a prayer answered ? We may 
indeed conceive that light and strength may 
reach him through providential means, by some 
aid supplied ab extra, by which the mental 
vision is clarified. But if this does not come, 
and if any mystical influence is possible, how 
does it reach him ? Is (1) the influence brought 
to bear upon the will direct, imparting strength, 
or (2) upon some feeling or emotion imparting 
stimulus and intensity, or (3) upon the think- 
ing principle, quickening its vivid action, 
bringing into play powers ordinarily dormant, 
and through this process giving to the ideal 
end such attractiveness that it becomes a moral 



INSPIRATION. 23 

force drawing toward itself, and thus elicits the 
human response and activity by the exhibition 
of the Divine Love? An extended critique 
might be made of the two former hypotheses, 
the result of which would show that we know 
of no such thing as will abstracted from 
thought and emotion, and which can be acted 
upon directly ; nor do w^e know of any emotion 
that can be abstracted from the thought which 
has supplied its object. Dismissing these, then, 
as untenable, we bring up for examination the 
third , hypothesis, and ask, if the influence is 
upon and through the thinking principle, how 
is it reached ? But the mind itself is w^hat it is 
by virtue of its relations bodyward, as well as 
spiritward, and cannot be rightly thought if 
neglecting these relations. Is the mind reached, 
then, and the consciousness affected through 
the medium of the physical relations solely, by 
influence upon the body or the brain, by which 
the abnormal physical proclivities are reached 
and weakened, and the mental vision thus freed 
from perturbation ; or is the mind reached from 
the spirit side, by spirit communing or coales- 
cing with spirit ? Scrutinizing carefully human 
experience, it seems that all moral and religious 



24 MENS CHEISTI. 

advance comes by clarification of the pure 
thought movement by which motives are 
framed. From this it would seem to follow 
that the mental is the mediating element in 
human action connecting the physical and the 
spiritual elements. Take a concrete case again. 
It is no conquest over a perverted physical 
appetite, which is reached through the weaken- 
ing of that appetite by some mystical influence. 
The moral worth is lost ; and this may show 
that the influence of the Holy Spirit is not 
upon our ph^^sical being as purely physical, but 
only avails of this so far as is needful to 
produce mental change. For it is a conquest 
of a perverted physical appetite which is 
reached through some vivification of an ideal 
presentation having higher attractiveness, 
whereby we draw away from and resist the per- 
version of the physical appetite. The two 
present moral alternatives, and the power of 
good has overcome the power of evil. We 
infer, then, that the Holy Spirit acts upon the 
human will through an illumination made in 
the realm of ideas. Moral and religious ideas 
exist in all human souls, as such ; dim and 
obscured it may be, but still there, and may, in 



INSPIRATION. 25 

every degree, be clarified and made influential. 
To accomplish this is not to add new powers to 
the human being, but to bring out his latent 
powers and capacities, to show of what he is 
capable, and what is the right interpretation of 
his aspirations. How, then, are these ideas of 
God, of one's self as free and responsible, of the 
ideal end, or one's normal destiny ; these, 
which are the spring of all moral movement, 
how are they to be illumined? Is (1) the 
energy in activity through physical media, 
freeing from clogs and perturbations the brain- 
movement, quickening its activity, intensifying 
its penetrative power, and enlarging its compre- 
hension ; or (2) is it by direct action upon the 
pure psychical consciousness existing beneath 
the brain-movement, and which an enquiry 
into the facts of human sleep and dreaming 
may authorize us to infer is a continuous and 
unbroken thread, which constitutes our per- 
sonal identity? To adopt the first solution 
would throw upon us the immense task of 
accounting for all that occurs in man from 
physical antecedents only ; an attempt which 
has never been successful, and against which all 
spiritual philosophy and the utterances of the 



26 MENS CHRISTI. 

Christian Scriptures are a protest ; which con- 
tend or imply that man is a true universal, and 
that existence is wider than our knowledge, 
that man reflects what is unknown as well as 
what is known. The moral idea itself disap- 
pears, or is shown to be baseless, unless the 
physical changes of the universe are for a 
moral end, and are ruled by the purpose of the 
latter. This is the contention of rival philoso- 
phies, the one holding that physical changes 
alone produce the (so called) moral results, the 
other that a moral aim rules all physical 
changes. Unless this latter were the truth, all 
prayer would be illegitimate. 

It may indeed be questioned whether spirit 
ever does or can act direct upon spirit, and 
without media, seeing that the divine glory is 
God's own medium to accomplish all creaturely 
existence and communication with the same. 
But it cannot be thence inferred that the deter- 
minations of the divine glory, which constitute 
our known universe, exhaust its possibilities of 
determination ; otherwise we should have to 
think all angelic life, and the life of souls after 
death, as under human physical conditions 
still. We hold, then, that we may rightly 



INSPIRATION. 27 

think determinations of the divine glory below 
our knowledge, therefore mystical, and that 
through these and by acting upon the human 
sub-consciousness, beneath the brain-move- 
ment, the Holy Spirit effects whatever change 
is required : which conclusion is strictly scrip- 
tural. 

What degree of such influence, then, entitles 
it to be, in its result, called Inspiration f In 
the sense above given, all Christians are in- 
spired, and upon this must be built whatever 
further inspiration is possible. That the dis- 
tinction is one of degree, and not of kind, is 
shown by the fact that the results of such in- 
spiration, as discovered in the utterances of 
Jesus, and of the New Testament writers, can be 
measurably, and by degrees entirely, followed, 
apprehended, thought and made practical by 
the Christian mind. If they could not be, 
they would be inoperative, would be as words 
in a foreign language, and could not be called 
truths, till some correspondent thought or 
meaning came to pass. But it does not follow 
that the comprehension of the same can be at 
once complete and exhaustive ; rather, that the 
Christian mind must be stimulated, and beck- 



28 MENS CHKISTI. 

oned on step by step. Truth is uttered in lan- 
guage always symbolic, more or less inadequate, 
and is bit by bit appropriated. Nor does any 
quickening of the sub-consciousness, whereby 
new truth is seized and assimilated, take place 
in man as purely passive. It respects and is 
conditioned by his moral status and capacity, 
and nowhere overrules his mental idiosyncrasy. 
Yet moral and religious growth, developing this 
idiosyncrasy, must enable one more and more 
readily to detect the truth thus expressed by 
symbols, whether language or vision. The 
domination over language cannot be at its 
uttermost unless the empirical knowledge, from 
whose material language is constructed, is also 
exhaustive. Any imperfection in one implies 
imperfection in the other. And this shows that 
language is never an absolutely adequate 
vehicle for the communication of truth. Jesus' 
language is accounted for by his historical an- 
tecedents. If not perfect, it implies that his 
empirical knowledge was not perfect, but both 
were acquired gradually in the course of human 
development. But of the absolute truth, which 
underlies and explains all facts, we may hold, 
as I have shown, that he had intuition. By 



INSPIRATION. 29 

means of this he could see more and more 
clearly the meaning of all human history, as 
the facts of this history passed into his knowl- 
edge, though still enough of darkness remained 
to make possible his trials, his confession of 
ignorance, his exclamations in Gethsemane and 
upon the cross. 

We may regard, then, the inspiration of the 
Scripture-writers as similar to his. It was, thus, 
an outlook from the same centre, but less ex- 
tensive than his, since limited and determined 
by the immediate providential purpose. The 
action of the Holy Spirit upon them must have 
respected this immediate purpose, and thus was 
guiding and overruling. That they were thus 
guided is shown as much by their reticence as 
by their affirmations. That the authors of the 
Synoptical Gospels, setting themselves to the 
task of reminiscence, or of compilation from 
existing memoranda, should have contented 
themselves with these simple narratives, should 
have refrained from all speculations, should 
have given us no information or conjecture as 
to the life of Jesus before he began to exercise 
his ministry, except of the occurrence in the 
Temple during his childhood (which occurrence 



30 MENS CHKISTI. 

has profound theologic significance), and that 
they should have interspersed no comments 
of their own upon the events they record, is 
an instance of restraint that confirms our behef 
of a providential or mystical overruling, and 
that they were guided what not to say. On 
this account, also, we may have confidence in 
what they said, though there is always room 
for the critical enquiry whether what they 
wrote has been correctly transmitted. 

Nor can it be maintained that inspiration, or 
inward illumination of essential truth, is neces- 
sarily accompanied by such domination over 
language as infallibly to secure its correct ap- 
preciation by others. The defect may be in the 
vehicle as well as in the recipient; for the 
vehicle is not the author as a passive organ, but 
one having his own history and his own idio- 
syncrasy. To detect a unified system of truth 
in the utterances of such men is the after-work 
of theology, or the meditative Christian con- 
sciousness ; for which, too, the influence of the 
Holy Spirit, or inspiration in a lower degree, is 
still required. If so, and the difference between 
these writers and the ordinary illumined Chris- 
tian intelligence is one of degree and not of 



INSPIRATION. 31 

kind, then we may think that the uhimate 
result of Christian progress and mental attain- 
ment will have slowly diminished this differ- 
ence of degree, and that the intelligence of the 
last generation will have appropriated all the 
thought of these men, and be identical with 
theirs. In the interval, that Christian intelli- 
gence should sometimes err in the subjective 
holding, follows as a matter of course. 

These inspired men were divinely enabled to 
think from a deeper centre, and so have a 
wider range, though the clarity and extent of 
their outlook must have been ruled by the im- 
mediate providential purpose. The divine 
guidance did not render them omniscient, but 
respected the divine purpose only. We are by 
no means authorized to think that the authors 
of the Synoptical Gospels w^ere enabled to pene- 
trate as deeply into the profound and far-reach- 
ing words of Jesus as St. John was, whose 
mind the Holy Spirit ruled for quite another 
purpose. Thus the difference between the Sy- 
noptical Gospels and that of St. John did not 
depend simply and only upon difference of ex- 
perience and culture, but as well upon the in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit for different pur- 



32 MENS CHRISTI. 

poses. In the case of the three evangeUsts, the 
general Chrstian intelKgence had not been 
developed far enough to make the language 
possible for them a sufficient organ of transmis- 
sion, as it came to be in the cases of St. Paul, 
of the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, 
and of St. John. Thus the Holy Spirit follows 
and adapts his activity to human mental 
growth, and does not anticipate and lead it 
along passively. Man is not degraded but 
elevated in our regard by this divine procedure. 
Yet the fundamental truth which underlies the 
utterances of these men is identical. They do 
not contradict one another in their intuitions, 
however they may differ in their mediated 
knowledge, — which is another proof of a divine 
overruling. This absolute internal harmony is 
the most convincing proof of their inspiration. 



LECTURE 11. 

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT. 

Theology, in dealing with the doctrine of 
Atonement (by which word is meant the 
changed relation between God and man, accom- 
plished as result by the sacrifice of Christ), has 
made but slow advance. What has been gained 
has been chiefly negative ; that is, the insuf- 
ficiency of the many tentatives to incorporate 
this doctrine into a self-coherent theologic sys- 
tem has been made manifest. If satisfaction for 
the co-ordinating mind is ever reached, no 
doubt it will be seen that the true regard of it 
has been unconsciously held and taken for 
granted, or instinctively divined, all the while ; 
and the evidence of this may be looked for in 
Christian literature, and will be found quite as 
much, or more, in the naive devotional or po- 
etic utterances as in the more deliberate sys- 
tematic effusions. 

But something positive, also, has been gained 
by the discovery, or the suspicion, that the 
method pursued in the investigation has been a 



34 MENS CHRISTI. 

wrong one, or, at least, an incomplete one. The 
problem has been taken up as an abstract one, 
or an isolated one, disconnected from its proper 
theologic antecedents. The various texts of 
the New Testament directly referring to this 
doctrine have been gathered together and a 
system sought to be elicited from them ; to 
make which sufficient, certain abstract pre- 
suppositions have been quietly assumed with- 
out examining or proving their validity ; or, 
otherwise, some one of the scriptural expres- 
sions denoting the result of the atoning sacrifice 
has been taken and made the key by which to 
explain all the others. Thus, redemption, rec- 
onciliation, satisfaction, have been successively 
taken as thoughts from which to evolve systems, 
with results plausible and accepted for a time, 
but whose unsatisfactoriness has been at length 
made manifest. For illustration : we have 
the old Patristic theory, that man was bought 
out of his bondage to Satan by paying to the 
Prince of Evil the price of the death of Christ, 
this equivalent being given to make the scales 
of justice even. This is the theory which, car- 
ried to its extreme length, gave rise to utter- 
ances that seem to us, now, absurd and almost 



ATONEMENT. 35 

ridiculous. That this theory, in this and the 
milder forms, had a basis of truth is not to be 
denied ; but that as a form of the doctrine of 
atonement it should have had vitality for so 
many centuries, and at length be abandoned, 
not without struggles, as untenable, shows that 
the speed of human speculative thought was 
very slow at first, and has since undergone 
progressive acceleration. 

Again : we have the Anselmic theory, in 
which the death of Christ is supposed to have 
special value over and above his life of sacri- 
ficial obedience, and is, on this account, re- 
garded as a tribute to the divine Justice, 
needful to be paid that the divine Mercy 
might flow forth. The offshoots from this 
theory, in the earlier and later Calvinistic 
schemes, and in many of the treatises of Roman 
and Reformed theology, have been based upon 
the assumed validity of this same abstract prin- 
ciple of justice. Thus, the old Patristic theory, 
on the one side, and the Anselmic theory and its 
offshoots on the other, which at first regard seem 
to be antagonistic, are found to be fundament- 
ally in agreement, since based upon the same 
notion of justice, as an absolute principle, whose 



36 MENS CHRISTI. 

requirements are imperious. The language of 
this has all along been infecting, and is still 
affecting, the utterances of Anglican theology. 

There is another class of theories, which 
deny the need of maintaining any transcend- 
ent efficacy in the death of Christ for loosing 
man from his bondage to sin and annulling 'its 
penal results, and make its virtue consist solely 
in the influence wrought thereby upon human 
consciousness, either to terrify or to attract and 
win him, — thus that it has simply moral fit- 
ness and no ontological necessity. That there 
is an element of truth in this all other systems 
whatever are willing to admit ; but it is too 
easy a solution, too superficial to meet the 
scrutiny of profound thought. It has failed 
to satisfy, chiefiy because it is manifest that 
the Scripture-writers had in their minds some- 
thing other and deeper than all this. 

Still another class of thinkers, well repre- 
sented by the Roman Catholic theologian 
Pabst, acknowledging that the sacrifice of 
Christ must be thought to have ontological 
virtue and results, so emphasize the sacrificial 
obedience pervading his life, tracing it back 
to the divine self-limitation involved in the 



ATONEMENT. . 37 

incipient Incarnation itself, as to leave for 
thought no special significance or necessity for 
his death, except as the culmination of his 
moral or religious obedience. That it is, in- 
deed, such a culmination is obvious ; but so 
far as this theory enlightens us, the mind to 
die would appear sufficient, and the actual 
death not indispensably necessary. Its pro- 
found significance as part of the human career 
is not brought out, nor sufficient warrant given 
for the scriptural expressions. We need still 
to know why the actual death must ensue in 
order that the intended result may be brought 
about. 

Others, again, maintaining the necessity 
of his death, explain it from the assumed 
validity of some physical principle, which 
originated these ontological results — a scheme 
which requires an inversion of every spiritual 
philosophy, subordinates the moral to the 
physical, and makes the relations of the latter 
primal and paramount. 

Turning away from all these theories, other 
theologians pursue their enquiries by the his- 
toric method, and study the sacrifices of the 
older dispensation, to discover what they can 



38 MENS CHEISTI. 

from the same of the divine intent and mean- 
ing, and carry this Kght with them to illumine 
the enquiry into the meaning of the sacrifice 
of Christ. These sacrificial rites are discovered 
or assumed to have an educational or religious 
value, intended to prepare the mind of the 
chosen people for what was to be fully recog- 
nized when the sacrifice of Christ should be 
proclaimed as redemptive. Thus, these sacri- 
fices and Christ's sacrifice likewise, are part of 
an economic system, a part of the providential 
treatment. Thus this view, as well as some of 
the former ones, inspires a mental leaning 
towards, and allies itself very readily with, 
the notion so long and persistently held, that 
there was no absolute necessity for the incar- 
nation and the sacrifice of Christ, but only 
moral fitness ; or that this method for human 
recovery could be traced back no further than 
to an arbitrary decree of God. Many of the 
most eminent Patristic and medieval theo- 
logians (Anselm being a notable exception) con- 
tent themselves with regarding the method for 
human recovery as only one of many possible 
methods by which it could have been accom- 
plished. Closely scrutinized, this notion either 



ATONEMENT. 39 

refers human recovery ultimately rather to the 
power than to the love of God, or ignores that 
love is a moral necessity, and, by introducing 
an element of arbitrariness into the divine 
character, loAvers instead of exalting our idea 
of the One Supreme. Thus, in speculating upon 
the divine freedom, as in similar speculations 
upon human freedom, the will is thought as 
separate from the nature, and not as its neces- 
sary expression. I hope that it will appear, in 
what I shall say, that, given certain postulates, 
namely, God being what he is, and man being 
what he is, and their actual relations what they 
are, no other mode of human recovery is think- 
able, or was possible, than that by which it 
was effected ; that it flows in due course from 
the true idea of God and from the immutable 
constitution of the universe. 

This Avhole study of the older dispensation, 
and of its sacrificial rites in particular, is very 
well in its place, and must become a part of an 
exhaustive treatment of the entire doctrine, but 
I regard it, as availed of by many, as a reversal 
of the true method. It is required to supple- 
ment, and should not be used to be supple- 
mented by, an encjuiry into the significance 



40 MENS CHEISTI. 

of the death of Christ himself, to discover 
if it has not other necessity than its economical 
fitness. The antitype can never be fully 
understood by the study of the type. History 
is only rightly understood when studied in 
the light of its final cause. The immediate 
intent of these prescribed sacrificial rites was 
the removal of temporal disabilities and the 
restoration of religious privileges, and they 
were thus made indispensable for the promised 
divine favor and blessing. The entire trans- 
actions belong to the temporal sphere, though 
they have the further and less immediate result 
of sustaining and advancing the religious 
education of the chosen people. They were 
mediately and not immediately moral prescrip- 
tions. But, as ritual, they prefigure, on a 
lower plane, what was to take place on a higher 
plane, with far other results. The final cause 
of the sacrifice of Christ was an ontological 
change. It was to reverse the movement of the 
universe, so far as it can come within human 
knowledge, or to introduce a harmonizing pro- 
cess. It was to start the return current of 
human history back to God. To study it one 
has to look into the very depths of the divine 



ATONEMENT. 41 

philosophy. Then, if we can find its place in 
the whole scheme of the divine dealings with 
humanity, we may look backward and see how 
it was reflected by anticipation in these pre- 
figurative rites. Then, too, we may make use 
of the analogies suggested by these to throw 
back the reflected light and increase the bright- 
ness of that from which it was reflected. 

This method, while a true and valuable 
one, should occupy the second place, and not 
the first place, in an exhaustive enquiry or 
treatment. What should be done first is to see 
what doctrine of sacrificial atonement must 
flow out of its theological antecedents, e. g., to 
study the incarnation itself in the form which 
it took in consequence of human dereliction 
(whereby it had to be redemptive and regen- 
erative as well as elevating and beatiflc), so as 
to see that the death of Christ is a necessary 
moment in the process. This may be called 
an a priori method, but the enquiry proceeds 
from antecedents which facts, philosophy and 
revelation unite in confirming, and is not a 
process of deduction from any assumed and 
abstract principle or proposition. 

Such a principle is assumed in all those 



42 MENS CHRISTI. 

schemes of doctrine which make the death 
of Christ a tribute to the divine justice. 
This has been taken as an absolute principle, 
having its own imperious requirements, with- 
out establishing the validity of such an as- 
sumption, without looking for the origin of 
the conception in human thought. 

If justice were an absolute principle, we 
should be able to think it as belonging to 
the Godhead itself, irrespective of any created 
universe "(if this be thought as a free creation, 
occurring in time) ; but there is no room 
for such a conception in the doctrine of 
the Trinity in Unity ; nor is there any 
room for it when creation is superadded. 
Not until intelligent life, human freedom, and 
the possibility of moral distinctions appear in 
the universe is there any room for such a prin- 
ciple. If we can think man as not sinning, 
as true to his moral allegiance, and as nor- 
mally developed from his pristine innocence 
till he should reach moral indefectibility, there 
is still no room for it. The beneficence of God 
in adapting man's environment to his pro- 
gressive changes, with all its result of blessing, 
the gift of a larger liberty, and the opening 



ATONEMENT. 43 

of new sluices of enjoyment, is only Love. 
But when the contradiction of sin comes to 
be, then love itself becomes justice, and the 
divine providential treatment divides itself 
into two streams, blessing or punishing (but 
still with regard to the ideal and organic 
unity of the race), blessing or punishing ac- 
cording as the human response is loving or 
unloving, and faint or strong in either cate- 
gory. Thus is revealed the immutable con- 
stitution of the known universe, and that all 
physical well-being and mental expansion 
flow sooner or later, and by pathways not 
entirely untraceable, in the train of moral 
obedience, or responsive love ; and all ill- 
being, suffering and impoverishment of re- 
sources in the train of moral transgression — 
this, too, partially visible as well as neces- 
sarily thinkable. That in the onward flow 
the innocent suffer for the sin of the guilty, is 
not to be explained by any doctrine of sub- 
stitution (a resort of the logical mind to rest 
in a premature solution), in which justice is 
made an unmoral attribute, a mathematical 
principle, which by no ingenuity can be rec- 
onciled with the divine love. If one ever 



44 MENS CHRISTI. 

voluntarily suffers for the fault of another, 
in ordinary human experience, it is because 
of the effect such substitution may have upon 
the mind of that other, or upon the mind 
of someone else having the power to inflict 
suffering. It is an arbitrary assent, and has 
no moral significance or fitness. There is no 
possibility of making them equivalents, espe- 
cially as the suffering cannot be judged and 
graded by its objective form, but only by the 
capacity of the sufferer. What would be 
heavy for one would be light for another, and 
thus, even in this superficial respect, the scale 
is not balanced. We all know of the absurd 
attempts to make the suffering of Christ an 
equivalent for the suffering due to the elect — 
a solution which was reached by the tyranny 
of logic, or else was a confession of mental 
impotence, and declined the enquiry into what 
kind of suffering was not possible for Jesus, 
and what was possible, and which thus ob- 
scured our conception of his love. That one 
does and should suffer on account of the sin 
of another is a corollary from the doctrine 
of the organic unity of the human race, a 
scriptural doctrine to which science is yearly 



ATONEMENT. 45 

adding new confirmations, and which, when 
scrutinized, enlarges our conception of the 
divine idea for man, and brings out new 
richness and beauty. Thus justice, in the 
human mind, appears as an a posteriori infer- 
ence, and may be seen to be simply the form 
which the divine love takes in consequence 
of the dereliction. Even when it punishes 
it is seen to be indirectly recuperative 
in its intent, and when it chastises it is 
seen to be directly remedial. No inference 
drawn from God's treatment of his creatures 
which carries us around to a contradiction of 
his love is valid, any more than is any infer- 
ence which contradicts man's moral inde- 
pendence. 

If there be valid speculative ground for 
holding what is called '' The Scotist Doc- 
trine of the Incarnation " (and we acknowl- 
edge that there is not valid scriptural ground 
to erect it into a dogma, yet that the New 
Testament affords no contradiction), and that 
it was the divine intent for man that he 
should reach apotheosis, for Avhich a new act 
of divine creative interference was needful, 



46 MENS CHRISTI. 

then it would follow that death was no part 
of the divine intent for man — did not enter 
into the essential idea of man. His very 
spiritual relation, which made him more 
than animal, implied that he should not be 
bound by this law of all other animal life. 
(But this ultimate elevation, when humanity 
should have reached fitness for still another 
step upward, could not be called a regeneration, 
except in a secondary sense, the same as if the 
irradiation of the animal soul by spirit ele- 
ments should be called a regeneration^ The 
moral and religious principle, having acquired 
sufficient spiritual strength, having proved 
itself adequate to triumph over the lower 
forces, and having maintained itself in the 
existing relation to the universe Avould at 
length have become '' eternal life." Death is 
an abnormality, and the result of the moral 
defection. Then, when sin entered the world, 
man began to die. The spiritual principle was 
weakened, and human vitality must ulti- 
mately succumb. The human career now be- 
comes something other. A changed relation 
to the environment becomes necessary and 
actual. Thus man dies and assumes another 



ATONEMENT. 47 

set of relations to the outlying universe. We 
might, as an independent enterprise, show 
that this new relation to the environment is 
now a necessary moment in the process which 
is carrying him on to his perfection, but there 
is no room here for this.* 

We cannot hold that the divine intent for 
man has been changed by the incoming of the 
contradiction. He is still to be enabled to 
fulfill his idea. Hence, as needful for 
this, the incarnation still occurs, but is 
now changed in its form. It is still, mediately 
and remotely, elevating and beatific, but im- 
mediately redemptive and regenerative. It has 
now to carry the w^eight of a redemptive pro- 
cess to annul the negation ; to make, on the 
one side, sin possible to be forgiven, i. e., to 
ward oflP, attenuate and extinguish its conse- 
quences, and, on the other, to strengthen the 
principle of moral obedience or religious love, 
and, pari passu with these, to work changes 
in the other constituents of the complex 

* In some form or other, what is called " The Fall of Man" cannot possi- 
bly be declined by anyone who admits the absolute character of moral dis- 
tinctions. An animal is innocent. Man is not innocent. That whereby he 
became other than innocent constitutes his fall. If this was necessary, he 
cannot be blameworthy. That he accuses himself shows that it was not 
necessary. Historical enquiry will never either deny or confirm this a priori 
conclusion. 



48 MENS CHRISTI, 

human nature, to make it physically and 
mentally correspondent to the ultimate moral 
perfection ; in other words, to be regenerative. 

Thus, to be the seed, or the progenitor of 
the new human race, the Eternal Son must 
enter human life in its actual conditions, in 
order to transmute it. Besides, then, what- 
ever else is required to fulfill the lot of man, 
he must needs pass through suffering and 
death. Now, the victor}^ over the lower 
forces is not to be reached spontaneously, 
but through effort and struggle. In other 
words, the divine self-limitation has become 
sacrificial. 

We adopt here the Patristic sense of the 
word ''satisfaction," and use it to denote not 
a tribute to any abstract principle of justice, 
but the complacency of the divine mind 
over the perfect human love which is to 
bring about the perfected human nature ; 
which perfect human love now appears for 
the first time in the dying Christ. If this new 
germ can fructify, and show itself as a form 
of life in man, it is thus shown to be regen- 
erative. Ideally man is redeemed, and con- 
cretely in the progenitor of the new race, 



ATONEMENT. 49 

from whom all the consequences of the dere- 
liction pass away. Thus the resurrection of 
Jesus, and the passing away of all clouds 
from his consciousness, occur not as the super- 
induced or arbitrary reward for his moral 
obedience, but necessarily, as the returning 
flood of the divine creative activity, which 
now can move through unobstructed channels. 
How the results of the redemptive act, and 
of the completion of the regenerative process, 
are to reach and be manifested in others, in a 
subjective and in an objective process, bringing 
before us the doctrines of Christian faith, on 
one side, and on the other of the Christian 
church and sacraments, is an independent and 
subsequent enquiry. What remains is to show 
that in order to be redemptive and regenera- 
tive the career of Jesus must needs carry him 
through the article of death, — to exhibit this 
as indispensable, so as to warrant the emphasis 
laid upon it by the authors of the New Testa- 
ment Scriptures, whereby will be seen that in 
the true sense the divine justice is thereby 
manifested rather than appeased. 

We need, then, to know, first, what death 
is, so far as is possible to know, i.e. to express 



50 MENS CHRISTI. 

it in such terms as will satisfy philosophic 
thought. 

There is no warrant to identify it (as has 
been done) with the principle of moral evil, 
as though it were brought about by the energy 
of an evil spiritual entity ; for moral evil is a 
contradiction rather than a negation, and 
death, abstractly considered, is a negation and 
no contradiction. There is no contradiction 
to reason, or violation of the aesthetic sense, 
in the fact that death occurs in vegetable or 
in animal life ; rather, in the evolution of the 
divine ideas, and in the perpetual changes 
which have occurred in the plant and animal 
forms of existence, there is food and high grati- 
fication for the sesthetic requirements. The 
contradiction shows itself, first, in animal pain 
(which has its own explanation, though but a 
partially satisfying one, since it carries us back 
to the prior question of the connection of 
physical with moral evil). Whatever machin- 
ery be needed to prolong the existence of a 
living organism, or to extinguish it, it is 
simply reducible to the work and the play 
of the known forces, vital, chemical, mechani- 
cal. Disease, which combats vitality, or the 



ATONEMENT. 51 

too weak vitality itself, in whatsoever concrete 
ways this abstract contest proceeds, needs no 
increment beyond these rival physical forces 
to explain that death occurs. If it be true that 
in all animal blood there is a contest between 
two infinitesimal forms of life, we see that 
either one of them may be extinguished, and 
that in every case the chemical force resumes 
its sway. And although (as is afiirmed in our 
latest science) the primordial cells from which 
originates animal life have persistent existence, 
and do not perish by reproduction, as do the 
clifFerentiated ones when the sexual distinction 
appears, yet they are not immortal, since they 
may suffer violence and extinction ; and thus 
persistent existence is no part of their essential 
idea. 

Death is a fact, and follows all known forms 
of life, without exception. It means for phi- 
losophy that the idea which the divine energy 
in actualizing is not one that requires immor- 
tality as its essential condition. It is part of 
the process of evolution, of the universal flow 
which itself exhibits the fertility and the 
inexhaustible content of the divine thought. 
Not yet has been lodged in the physical uni- 



52 MENS CHRISTI. 

verse a mode offeree, a form of vitality, which 
can maintain itself persistently against the 
chemical and mechanical modes of motion ; 
but that such a form of vitality should be 
possible is the persistent craving of the con- 
crete human being, which thinks and feels 
that it, as an organism linked to the beau- 
tiful universe, ought not to perish, that it 
is capable of higher things than these. It has 
aspirations which the fact of death seems to 
contradict, to crush and extinguish, and thus 
it appears to human consciousness as the 
intensest of contradictions. It is for human 
imagination the cutting loose the bonds which 
tie the universe, with all its beauty, its re- 
sources for knowledge, its gratifications for love, 
to the soul of man, longing to retain them and 
make more of them. Though the human soul 
cannot imagine nor think its own extinction, 
it can think and imagine its own reduction to 
poverty by the withdrawal of these resources, 
and that it may be left to its own memories 
in a world of shadows, and be able to look 
in upon itself, and understand itself, as it could 
not before amid the enticements, the hos- 
tilities and the perturbations of the existing 



ATONEMENT. 53 

sphere of its experience. And if there remains 
for thought still the abstract possibility or need 
of such a relation to an unknown environment 
as furnishes a medium for spiritual commu- 
nion, this is still something unknown, a realm 
where imagination has no food, and can only 
disport itself therein by bringing back the very 
relations which have ceased to^ be. If the 
human soul has persistent consciousness, it 
must either undergo this impoverishment of 
being permanently, or it must, after this 
stadium has fulfilled its purpose, resume its 
richer and progressive life. This uncertainty 
ever exists for the thinking soul of man, and 
it has only been relieved by the one alleged 
fact of the resurrection, or glorification, of Jesus 
Christ. When this is taken as a fact, and all 
doubts of it expire, the human soul starts 
forw^ard with a new vigor, and shows a death- 
less enthusiasm. This alone is sufficient to 
remoA^e the haunting sense of contradiction 
which has weighted the spiritual soul all along. 
Just here we have the a irriori and the a 
'posteriori grounds of Christian belief meeting 
and coalescing. For the reason, we have the 
conviction that a form of existence in which 



54 MENS CHRISTI. 

there is no contradiction, and in which the 
aesthetic sense suffers no violence, is possible. 
All instincts have objective purposes, and the 
instinct of aspiration, as true as that of self- 
preservation, has here its objective purpose. 
For the understanding and reproductive imag- 
ination, we have the actual thing exhibited, 
that one has* triumphed over death, and the 
whole of human aspiration been met. In this 
concrete case, the supreme condition for this 
lapsing, or upward flow, into a higher form of 
life, is the attainment of moral perfection, the 
growth from the primal innocence into inde- 
fectible spiritual strength, the coming to pass 
such human responsive love to the divine love 
as can no more be solicited by the human in- 
stincts which pertain to the present form of 
life. Now domination over nature may ensue, 
and does ensue. We learn the same lesson that 
death itself teaches, namely, that God will not 
allow the control of the forces, or the unlim- 
ited use of the resources, of his created uni- 
verse to any creature whose will is not identical 
with his own, whose love is not strong to meet 
all shocks, and is not beyond the possibility of 
shock. Thus life, as a permanent relation, 



ATONEME^^T. 55 

whose name is, therefore, " eternal life/' can 
only be had by one who is morally perfect. 
This shows, then, as the divine idea for man, 
who was not intended to die, could he have 
retained his moral innocence, and have allowed 
the spiritual principle to reach its ideal strength. 
But since this idea was not realized in the first 
human creation, it has 66e?i. realized in the new 
creation. When his career is finished, all power 
in heaven and in earth is given to Jesus Christ. 
Before going further, it may be well here to 
refer to certain ambiguous uses of the word 
'' death," which are neither scientific nor philo- 
sophical, which are simply poetical. Theology 
may avail herself of these only in the latter 
sense. Death is a fact, made known by exper- 
ience, which may be used as a figure to express 
or illustrate abstract cessation of being, or the 
cessation of any known set of relations what- 
ever. For instance, the phrase '' spiritual 
death " may be used to mean '^ a death unto 
righteousness " : and we have the antithetical 
one, ''a death unto sin." These expressions 
are only figurative, in either case. In the for- 
mer is denoted the possibility that the unlov- 
ing soul may carry the contradiction so far as 



56 MENS CHKISTI. 

to fix itself irrevocably in the antagonistic 
attitude : in the latter case is denoted that the 
sinning propensity may have undergone extinc- 
tion, or, at least, that the principle has been 
lodged in the soul which will issue in this 
result. 

Or, again, the expression may have been 
used as a synonym for annihilation, the pass- 
ing into nonentity of a spiritual soul. In this 
case it is a mere set of words which have no 
meaning, for it is impossible to think the cessa- 
tion of being of a spiritual soul. If it is self- 
centred, and morally its own creator, its moral 
characteristics belong to eternal relations, in 
which we can think no possibility of change. 
Even though it has come to be this by a 
divine creative act, it is on this account an 
independent entity, however its environment 
may be narrowed. It determines its own re- 
lation to whatever is beyond itself, so far as 
any ideal end can be set for it, or manufac- 
tured by it, out of existing material. Though 
created, it is itself a creator. God has limited 
himself to this extent that it has passed be- 
yond his control as to the determination of 
its moral form. In this is its dignity as the 



ATONEMENT. 57 

highest thinkable result of the divine crea- 
tive activity. If we speak of death in connec- 
tion with it, we mean the cessation of the 
known relations to the physical universe. 
Death, strictly speaking, is always, and only, 
physical ; and in the Scriptures, when not 
used figuratively, it always needs, for the full 
meaning, to be thought in such connection. 
Good and evil men both die, but the former 
have that within them which shall blossom 
into full life again, and renew the activity 
upon the physical environment which has 
been temporarily withdrawn. The latter, too, 
have been withdrawn from all known rela- 
tions to the outlying universe. What un- 
known relations remain or are still possible for 
them is a question closed for our thought. 

And now, to resume our main topic, the 
question still recurs, why was the death of 
Christ necessary ? If we abandon the thesis 
that it was a tribute to an abstract princi- 
ple of justice, or that it was made needful by 
some physical law profounder than all known 
laws, and to which moral changes are them- 
selves subordinated, such as the misused text 
" Without shedding of blood is no remission/' 



58 MENS CHEISTI. 

or that it was simply adding a climax of 
meaning to the educational economy which 
had prevailed hitherto in the divine dealings 
with the selected people, — on what other 
ground can it be held to have been a neces- 
sary condition for the redemptive work? 

If, as theologians generally have admitted, 
the virtue of Christ's death did not arise from 
the mere physical change, as such, but in the 
spiritual strength, in the unswerving will and 
the full responsive love, all these constituting 
his moral triumph, why was not the actual 
death spared him when this condition of the 
soul-consciousness was reached? Since hu- 
man perfection was attained, and the divine 
satisfaction had thereby, why did he not blos- 
som into complete being ? Why did he not 
come down from the cross, and show himself 
as glorified ? The imperfection of the type of 
Abraham and Isaac is here manifest. The 
resemblance is carried to a certain extent, but 
then it ceases. Abraham was spared the real 
sacrifice to which he had consented, even 
though it violated his moral instincts, and 
thus became a trial of faith. But Jesus is not 
spared, and the intent of God the Father, 



ATONEMENT, 59 

which he. had made his own, goes on to its 
fulfiUment. No occurrence on a lower plane 
could fully typify what was to occur on this 
higher one. The triumph of Jesus had no 
perfect and true image in any possible physical 
act of man, nor could any human moral or 
religious intent fully prefigure Avhat was pass- 
ing in his consciousness. Be that as it may, 
he is not spared, and we ask wdiy? 

First, let us notice that the persistent purpose 
to do and submit to the will of the Father 
could not have been perfect had he not known 
his death to be inevitable. In his sayings he 
had previously alleged it to be so, but the 
tempting understanding and the physical in- 
stincts had suggested otherwise. Hence the 
prayer ''Father, let this cup pass from me." 
But this temptation is overcome. Death is not 
declined. The consciousness of the seeming 
withdrawal of the sustaining influence shows 
itself in the utterance '' My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?" This, and the after 
one, " Father, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit," show that his death was taken for 
granted and submitted to. He knows now 
the Father's will, and his own divine wdll in 



60 MENS CHRISTI. 

the form of his human will ; and thus God 
and man meet in the profoundest depths of 
our spiritual being. 

Moreover, we may allege economical reasons 
why his death should have been actual. His 
intended followers would have missed the most 
powerful motive-spring had they not seen that 
his spiritual strength was sufficient to carry him 
through the article of death. Had he indeed 
come down from the cross and showed himself 
then and there as glorified and omnipotent, it 
would have been a display of divine power 
rather than a proof of his love ; and the task 
of faith would have been less. And there is 
the further reason (which I will not stop to 
explicate), that the recognition of glorified 
humanity may be possible only for those who 
themselves have been the subjects of incipient 
glorification. Thus to the other bystanders 
this would have been a disappearance, and 
nothing more. 

But it is one thing to hold his death to have 
been required for these economical reasons, 
and another to hold it to have been absolutely 
necessary for his own spiritual triumph, and to 
bring about the new relation to humankind. 



ATONEMENT. 61 

Death is a part of human experience, about 
which we know something when we look at it 
from outside, but w^hich we cannot look at from 
within. We cannot penetrate the conscious- 
ness of a human soul when the bonds which 
connect it with our known world undergo at- 
tenuation beyond a certain length. We cannot 
follow them to their severance. If there be a 
sub-consciousness in the human being all the 
while, and the brain-consciousness is made up 
of this and the determinations of the outer 
world, we cannot trace the subsidence of the 
latter into the former and describe it in words. 
Reproductive imagination is impotent here, but 
something remains for pure thought. To un- 
dergo death one must have passed through this 
phase ; nor would Jesus have passed through 
the human career, and known our lot in all 
points, had he not also have passed through it. 
If the soul-consciousness remains after death, 
it must know then for the first time what this 
mid-region contains — what death reall}^ is. 

Here now, for still further explication, we 
need to recall the doctrine, manifestly true, of 
the organic unity of the human race. From 
this it follows that the intent of the divine 



62 MENS CHRISTI, . 

dispensation in Christ is not to perfect and 
beatify individual human souls as such, but 
only as members of an organism. The intent 
is, either to regenerate the human race or else 
to create from it a new organism, which shall 
have ideal perfection and completeness. On 
grounds needless, perhaps, to adduce here, we 
hold God's intent for man to have been thus 
universal ; that Christ died for all men ; that 
the new organism will consist of all such as 
do not willfully withhold themselves from it. 
Thus it follows that the motive power of God's 
self-limitation, taking the form of sacrificial 
love, must be brought to bear upon all men ; 
and that otherwise the possibility of their per- 
fection is not supplied. If this be true, then the 
knowledge of God's love in Christ must reach 
those who have passed through death into 
whatever possible environment. This is not 
holding to any such notion as '' probation after 
death," as might easily be shown. As Jesus' 
knowledge was human, and attained through 
human media, his knowledge, before his own 
death, of the state of existence of human souls 
after death must have been such as was gained 
through human media. However modified by 



ATONEMENT. 63 

the divine element in the hypostatic union, 
and whatever prophetic vision may have been 
possible and actual for him, it was human 
knowledge stilL He must know thus, yet 
otherwise than thus, and in the full sense of 
knowledge, human existence in this form. 
Hence the significance, and the need for a soul 
under time-conditions, of the interval between 
his death and his resurrection. He does not 
know death, we may say, in the fullness of its 
definition until the present mode of being and 
that other mode of being stand in mental con- 
trast. Thus his own physical glorification, or 
instatement in the ideal and permanent rela- 
tion to his own glory, is postponed until he is 
brought into conscious connection with the 
departed ones, whom, too, he came to save. 
Thus, his death, and the subsequent conscious- 
ness and activity, do not appear as part of an 
arbitrary economy, but as necessary, as part of 
the process required for the ontological change 
which his redemptive work is to bring about.* 
Certainly, in the Christian Scriptures, the 
response of faith, in which human recovery 

* As something more than the meagre treatment of this interesting topic, 
alone possible in the dimensions of this lecture, I must be permitted to refer 
to its ampler treatment in the concluding chapters of the first volume of my 
work "Christian Doctrine Harmonized." 



64 MENS CHRISTI. 

is begun, is alleged to be elicited by the knowl- 
edge of Christ crucified, of the divine conde- 
scending love transmuting itself into the human 
responsive love. And this is, too, the descrip- 
tion of Christian experience. One would think, 
then, that the appreciation of this ought to be 
of something simple, and easy to be brought 
home to the simplest human capacity. And 
further meditation upon this ought to intensify 
one's conviction of this love, and not neces- 
sarily carry one into doubts and questionings, 
which are sure to arise if human ingenuity 
here insists upon a residuum, and obtrudes 
theories which sorely trouble the intellect. If 
abstract questions are here raised and solutions 
given which become weights to withhold the 
soul from yielding to this, God's revelation 
of himself, their untruth or insufficiency may 
be suspected. Such seems to have been the 
result of many theories of atonement which 
have made it to conceal some new and unique 
mystery. The attractiveness of Christianity 
has been diminished, and many have been 
repelled thereby. If the alleged mystery 
weakens the attractive power of Christ's atone- 
ment, it may be thought on that account to 
be spurious. Whatever mystery there be must 



ATOXEMEXT. 65 

be such as will enhance, and not hnpair, our 
conception of the divine love. The real 
mystery is for theologic reflection and not for 
popular instruction to deal with. It lies in 
the inability of the human mind to bring 
within the sphere of understanding and imagi- 
nation the divine self- limitation required for 
the incarnation itself. This appears when we 
endeavor to state it in terms, and it appears 
again, in the seeming oblivion of the divine 
consciousness indicated by Jesus' lament upon 
the cross. These two are the magna opera 
indeed, and difFerent aspects of the one 
mystery, but beyond this there need be 
none. And when brought up for reflection 
this mystery does not weaken but enhances 
our conception of the divine love, since it 
appears as lowering itself for our sakes to the 
greatest possible depth. 

That in the history of theologies new 
mysteries should have been superadded to this, 
which have no moral nor religious power, 
but suggest doubts, or keep the Christian 
mind in perpetual agitation, we are only recon- 
ciled to by regarding it as part of the dia- 
lectic process through which theology has 
made its advance. 



LECTURE III 

I^HE POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTUEE, AS DETEEMIN- 
ING THE MODE OF HUMAN MORAL ACTIVITY. 

What is in the future? What is the pos- 
sible and probable condition or set of relations 
before us, immediate or remote ? 

This is a question of surpassing interest for 
the human soul. What will be the existing 
state of things, according to our power of 
prevision, on this our planet, as well as what 
will be the issue in the realm of departed 
souls, is a question whose answer determines 
the aim and the mode of all moral activity. 
We plan our life and direct our energies ac- 
cordingly. Moral systems differ chiefly ac- 
cording to the extent of this prevision, and are 
either egoistic, and make the welfare and 
amount of happiness for the individual the 
guiding indication of present conduct ; or they 
are altruistic, i. e, some aim is set regarding the 
welfare and happiness of the human race, — an 
aim which may be comparatively clear in its 
outlook upon the immediate future, but which 

6G 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. G7 

is obscured in its imagination of that which 
is remote ; or they are religious, both when 
obedience to prescriptions is the rule, and the 
effort to penetrate the result is abandoned, and 
also when it is taken into the thought that 
conscious existence after death is possible, or 
probable, or certain, and when thus the fore- 
casted condition of the human race under 
another environment must have its influence 
in determining the plan of life and the mode 
of moral activity. 

If the thread of human history, as it is 
continued on this planet, and the thread of 
human history as it is continued in the 
conscious existence of human souls after death, 
be not utterly distinct, — if they have connec- 
tion, and are part of a unified system, — if 
there are not two streams of divine govern- 
ment, entirely separate, — then these, which 
seem apparently two, but which are ideally 
and in the divine mind one, must be interre- 
lated ; and if any knowledge of this interre- 
lation can be had, it must affect accordingly 
human moral activity. And thus it becomes 
manifest that a faulty abstraction may be made 
on either side, and that life may be planned 



68 MENS CHRIST!. 

with sole regard to the probability of the hap- 
penings in this visible sphere, disregarding 
the parallel and possibly converging current 
of history for the departed and departing gen- 
erations : or else the latter only may be held 
in view, and one become comparatively care- 
less and indifferent to any result of the actual 
human history, and the welfare of the genera- 
tions that are to succeed the existing one ; the 
importance of this, in the subjective regard, 
being swallowed up in the apparently superior 
importance of the ultimate and permanent con- 
dition of mankind. That these two are severed 
in thought, and thus that the guide to moral 
activity is partial or vacillating, can only come 
from a superficial regard, from a lack of ability 
or inclination to unify these two, or from the 
failure of any attempt so to do. Hence, we 
have accusations from either side. Christians 
have been faulted for too exclusive attention 
to the probable existence after death, and for 
disregarding the present needs and claims of 
the human race, and thus their morality has 
become the subject of criticism. And the other 
side has been faulted for blinding itself to the 
claims upon thought of the future state of 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 69 

existence, for planning the human career, 
and directing its energies as if this earthly 
experience were the only one. 

There is historic explanation of the fact that 
in the beginning of Christianity, when new 
hopes were started for mankind, when an un- 
wonted enthusiasm was aroused, when the 
knowledge or belief of the resurrection of its 
founder had entered the mind, when, too, it 
was the prevailing impression that the final 
consummation was nigh at hand, its adherents 
should have become indifferent to this present 
human existence. In their astonishment that 
any should withhold themselves from these 
comforting and inspiring thoughts and expec- 
tations, they were inclined to withdraw them- 
selves apart from the world and to deepen the 
chasm of separation. Yet the history of Chris- 
tianity shows that its adherents were constantly 
struggling against this, and gradually recog- 
nized, more or less extensively, that this 
present world had its claims upon them, that 
the intended reformation was larger than they 
had imagined, and was a more difficult task. 
The cardinal principle of Christian conduct, 
love, was too living to be long fettered by this 



70 MENS CHKISTI, 

blinding tendency, and it was forever breaking 
through these superimposed bounds, and busy- 
ing itself with the relief of human suffering, 
and with tentative efforts (as yet with unde- 
veloped intelligence as to methods) , to improve 
man's physical and social condition. Its mis- 
sionary enterprises, alas ! too often disregarded 
the immediate human welfare, but this was 
when a superstitious element had infected their 
activity, and outward and mechanical conform- 
ity was accepted instead of a spiritual allegiance. 
But, while never, perhaps, entirely free from 
this misapprehension of the intent of their 
Master, these enterprises were graduall}^ puri- 
fying themselves, and have always been a kind 
of index of the strength and purity of the gov- 
erning Christian motives. And in proportion 
to their purity were the claims of humankind, 
that its temporal welfare should not be dis- 
regarded, met and gratified with such intelli- 
gence as was had. 

A careful study of the New Testament 
shows that in the mind of Jesus Christ these 
two aims were equally set forth, and illustrated 
in his own conduct. Thus their unity was 
implied, if not stated in terms. And hence 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 71 

ideal Christianity is not chargeable with fault 
from either side ; and actual Christianity 
sooner or later endeavors to recover itself, if it 
discover in itself a disproportionate leaning 
either way. It is ever busy in attempts to 
unify both. 

But to return to our argument. It is 
evident that the rule of conduct to determine 
present activity, will undergo modification 
according to the clearness and truth of our 
prevision, and according as it extends but 
little way or far into the remote. The whole 
problem then, divides itself into two questions, 
or rather into three. First : what state of 
things, more or less satisfying the moral ideal, 
can be or may be reached on this planet, 
towards Avhich it is our duty to urge our 
way ? Second : what is the meaning, in our 
thought-system, of the state of being after 
death ? And, third : how are these interre- 
lated, and can they in combination furnish 
the true aim of our conduct and guide for 
our activity ? 

First, as to the earthly probabilities. It 
is certain that the mass of men, and ordinary 
minds must be content with, and are only 



72 MENS CHRISTI. 

adequate now, for a very unextended outlook. 
We may think, indeed, that in the days to 
come a vision of the farther remote may be- 
come more general, but just now they linger 
still in the mists. They must be content 
with such rules for moral conduct as present 
themselves as the crystallized results of human 
inquiry and experience. Unless they willfully 
disregard all moral distinctions whatever, 
they must still be truthful and benevolent. 
They must be honest according to present 
prescriptions until some other rule of justice 
shall have legitimately replaced the present 
ones. And if they are more than animals 
they must be God-fearing and devout. They 
still need to have the obligation to all this 
brought home to them ; for even in this 
stratum of humanity we witness constant 
outbreaks of the selfish principle, though, it 
may be, with more excuse than have the 
inroads of the selfish principle in the strata 
above them. For, for them it may be that 
the intelligence and the motives have not yet 
been supplied to keep them true to their own 
subjective or objectified ideals of conduct. 
But the more cultured and thoughtful 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTUKE. 73 

stratum of humanity, which always, either 
directly or indirectly, leads the others, needs 
and inclines to look deeper than all this, 
and to ask what is the ideal state of humanity 
on our planet, and how far can it be made 
real. Not until all belonging to this grade 
reach the same reply to these questions can 
they be at one in their advice to those below 
them, and agreed as to the mode of their 
own activity. 

This is a most profound problem, and 
tasks the human mind to the uttermost. It 
is the one which is now agitating the thought- 
ful world, and which has roused it from its 
mental repose to ask what remedy is possible 
for the wrongs and imperfections in the social 
state, and in human conditions in general. It 
is certainly a great gain that the wrong is 
seen and acknowledged. This is the first step 
towards its repair. And that some who see 
or feel this wrong are disposed to rush rashly, 
and others to tread cautiously, are the two 
forms now, of the progressive and conservative 
tendencies. Some are so captivated by the 
contemplation of a state of things which they 
can imagine, that they leap forward and 



74 MENS CHKISTI. 

contend for its realization without seeing the 
impediments in the way. And others, again, 
seeing that human selfishness perennially 
exists, and that to it can be traced all the 
wrongs of the past, foresee, or think they do, 
that it will continue to produce new wrongs, 
or the same wrongs in new form, and so 
they become despairing and inert. 

But this latter, the resort of the extreme 
conservative attitude or disposition, shows 
but a superficial regard. It ignores the 
fact that the condition of mankind has not 
been stationary; that it has a history ; that 
while the human motive-springs still remain 
the same, they actualize themselves in dif- 
ferent forms ; that there has been a growth 
in moral knowledge ; and that knowledge 
itself, by making the true ideal more evident 
and attractive to what is deepest in the 
human soul, reacts upon the motive-springs, 
and either intensifies the motive force of the 
good principle, or makes more diametrically 
contrary, willful and spiritual any opposition 
to it. The positive worth is in the progressive 
spirit. The worth of the conservative attitude 
is negative, and consists in weiQ'htino' and 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. ^O 

holding back the confused or thoughtless 
zeal of the former. 

Christian people, in endeavoring to settle 
these questions for themselves, have been ac- 
customed to consult their sacred writings, 
and some have professed to find in them 
doctrinal vindication for the endeavor to 
segregate the Christian community from the 
world, and hence draw the line of clemark- 
ation as sharply as possible. They have found 
indeed, that the immediate aim and effort 
of the divine mterference, and the consequent 
human activit}^, has been to make an election 
from the mass of mankind who should be 
the bearers and propagators of the new re- 
generating principle, and constitute, thus, a 
'' peculiar people." These were the '' leaven " 
of the world which was to assimilate to itself 
whatever did not refuse to be assimilated. If 
any did refuse to be thus assimilated, they, 
the leavened portion, must still remain a 
'' peculiar people." Hopeful and sanguine 
as St. Paul was of the results of the Christian 
principle, this distinction still remained in 
his mind, and to him the antagonism seemed 
likely to endure till the end of the dispensation. 



76 MENS CHRISTI. 

This conclusion had its germ and stimulus 
in the words of Jesus Christ himself. He 
prayed, indeed, for his disciples, and for all 
who should helieve in him through their 
word. But he by no means declared that 
the distinction was to be effaced. '' They are 
not of the world," said he, '' even as I am 
not of the world." The '' world " was still 
implied in his thought. He prayed that all 
these, thus separate, might be one, as he and 
the Father were one ; thus recognizing organic 
completeness in the new human race; and left 
untouched the question whether the completed 
organism, covering or including the two states 
of human existence, would be co-extensive 
with the human race, and be the old organism 
regenerated and reconstructed ; or, whether 
the antagonism would permanently continue. 
It cannot be argued, from a consensus of his 
entire words, that he committed himself to 
either alternative. And hence dogmatism is 
out of place here, and we are thrown upon 
our speculative ability. 

There is no doubt, however, that to an 
ordinary inspection the New Testament favors 
this latter view, especially as St. Paul, with 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. i i 

inspired intuition, or prophetic insight, seems 
to see the evolution passing beneath the shows 
of phenomena, and that the evil principle is 
spiritualizing itself as well as the good prin- 
ciple, assuming forms less gross and carnal, 
and becoming more purely willful and de- 
liberately antagonistic, till it should culmi- 
nate and manifest itself in some visible anti- 
christ. 

It is on this account that Christianity has 
been charged with admitting into its thought 
a persistent dualism, with regarding the irra- 
tional as unsolvable and unremovable, thus 
also with a violation of the sesthetic sense, 
which requires a removal of all contradiction. 
The question is whether, for human thought, 
there is any way of escaping this dualism. 

To avoid this, human ingenuity has been 
tasked to the uttermost, and various methods 
have been resorted to. The New Testament 
Scriptures have been studied, and isolated 
texts discovered which seemed to promise a 
universal restoration, or some earthly mil- 
lenium. But they do not seem to the un- 
prejudiced mind sufficient to bear the burden, 
and were manifestly foreign to the habitual 



78 MEJ^S CHEISTI. 

mode of thinking of the authors of these 
Scriptures. Besides, the speculative validity 
of this solution depends upon the validity of 
a prior solution. For it is no more irrational 
that the irrational should permanently endure 
than that it should ever have existed. Hence 
such as these need to show that the dualism 
is but seeming, and that evil is not irrational, 
(of which presently). 

Again we have the notion, not Scriptural 
but speculative, of conditional immortality, 
about which we need only say that it assaults 
the absolute character of moral distinctions, 
and requires an ethic of expediency only, 
hence that it affords a spurious sense of 
obligation, and substitutes a selfish for a 
loving motive-spring. 

Again, there are the various philosophic 
schemes which virtually deny the moral dis- 
tinction altogether, by making man and his 
determinations a moment or link in the inex- 
orable physical nexus. 

And for some, who have not been satisfied 
with these superficial resorts, there has been 
required an endeavor speculatively to discover 
a possible mode of human universal recovery, 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTTTRE. 79 

and thus to vindicate their emphasis upon the 
above-mentioned isolated texts of Scripture ; — 
an onerous task indeed, admitting the abso- 
lute character of moral distinctions, and one 
doomed to failure, and found at length to sub- 
side upon the unintelligent feeling or emotion 
of hope that God will in some way, undiscov- 
erable, annul the contradiction, and restore the 
human heart to its complacency. 

It would require too long a critique here, to 
deal with certain philosophic modes of treat- 
ing this question. We may say, however, that 
to make moral evil a necessary moment of the 
process, and a needful dialectic in the evolu- 
tion of the idea, again assaults the absolute 
character of moral distinctions, and cannot 
explain the form they take in human con- 
sciousness. 

None of these endeavors carry us out of the 
mists created by this apparent dualism, into 
the clear light beyond, of mental satisfaction. 
The conclusion may be that the solution of 
this problem eludes oiir mental insight, and by 
creating the alternatives for faith, thus elicits 
our moral strength, which is certainly needful 
for permanent human recovery. 



80 MENS CHKISTI. 

A solution of the inquiry into the possible 
and probable condition of the human race has 
been sought after in another way. Recogni- 
tion is made of the fact that human knowledge 
is progressive, and that consequently the im- 
provement and harmonization of its instincts, 
or crystallized prudential habits, must be 
also progressive. The principle of heredit}^ is 
availed of and followed out to the utmost of 
conjectured results.* And this is an imagina- 
tion of a generation in the far future, with 
rectified instincts, in which the altruistic and 
egoistic tendencies shall have coalesced ; — a 
fascinating ideal, indeed, which has an imper- 
ishable element of truth, with which the Chris- 
tian ideal has points of agreement ; but which, 
in my regard, is not philosophically nor even 
scientifically profound. 

For, it is acknowledged that the egoistic 

*We may note in this connection the effect upon this theory of Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer of the alleged discovery of Weisman, in his work on Heredity, 
that acquired habits are not inherited, that the modifications of human pro- 
clivity thus reached are only transitory, and are not included in the physical 
nexus. I have my doubts whether this is not a hasty conclusion, and await 
scientific testimony from a larger induction. A simple divergence from the 
customary mode of action, may indeed, in the next generation, be weakened 
and effaced. Bat if repeated in the generations which immediately follow, 
may modify the involipitary proclivity. This whole allegation separates 
into two streams the voluntary and involuntary modes of human activity 
and tendency, and does not fully admit their interaction, and their modifi- 
cation of each other. 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 81 

proclivities have had their origin in the needs 
derived from the environment, and been modi- 
fied by tlie requirements made by the sur- 
rounding nature, and, unless this too changes, 
these also must continue, and will perpetually 
bring assault upon the altruistic tendency. It 
is required, to justify the imaginative picture 
which this theory presents, that the obligation 
of sacrifice, or, (more correctly according to 
the requirements of the theory), the expedi- 
ency of sacrifice, shall become so paramount 
and universal a conviction as to annul, at the 
birth, any egoistic proclivity asserting itself. 
If such sacrifice shall continue to be difficult 
and painful, it will still remain as a contradic- 
tion nurturing again the egoistic proclivities. 
If it can be transmuted into pleasure, and thus 
be extinguished as sacrifice, this too must be 
transitory, since it will be assaulted by the 
despairing admission of its own transitoriness, 
since it gives a picture having no absolute 
worth, gratifying only momentarily the imag- 
ination, and above all haunted by the knowl- 
edge that it has been purchased at the fearful 
expense of the failures and the agonies of the 
past generations, of this holocaust of human 



82 MENS CHRISTI. 

victims ; a feeling sharp enough to wound its 
complacency, to start a pessimistic fear that 
the cycle may again revolve ; and vivid enough 
to generate a new set of instincts more subtly 
contradictory. 

The only relief that can come to human 
thought, when it occupies itself with these im- 
aginative pictures of a possible state of things 
here on earth, is derived from the admission 
that the generations departed have, too, a his- 
tory, and that carried on in a more than paral- 
lel, in a converging current, which will at 
length unite with the actual and visible hu- 
man history, and thus display the unity and 
the meaning of the whole, — to which conclu- 
sion the Christian Scriptures supply their 
Imprimatur. If there be grounds, metaphysi- 
cal, moral, as well as revealed, for holding hu- 
man immortality and responsibility, then these 
two questions cannot be separated ; or if stud- 
ied apart, it must be to see how they converge 
into one. 

Evidently humankind must go forward, 
and plan for itself, and devise measures for its 
own improvement, immediately or remotely, 
amid this darkness and uncertainty as to the 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 83 

ultimate results. No clear pathway for human 
thought is discernible by which it can prove 
for itself the removal of the contradiction of 
moral evil. But its refusal to abide content 
with the permanency of the irrational is per- 
ennial. And thus it vibrates. This is the 
intensest trial of its faith, — seduced, on the one 
hand to rest in premature solutions, and drawn 
by a profound mental requirement, on the 
other, to rest in its idea of God as still su- 
premely loving. Therefore perfect mental sat- 
isfaction cannot be had here. At any former 
period of the human story, at this period, at 
any conjectured future period, we do not see 
that this insight would have been or would be 
a boon ; for if it were granted, this trial of our 
spiritual fibre, — this despairing and hoping, 
this believing and doubting experience, would 
hardly have sufficient burden cast upon it to 
call out the utmost human moral strength, and 
thus elevate man to his true dignity. On the 
one hand we refuse to think the dualism to be 
necessary. On the other, we cannot deny that 
it exists and is more than scJiein. In this per- 
plexity and uncertainty mankind must go on, 
and prepare itself for its coming experience on 



84 MENS CHRISTI. 

this planet, and for its future existence under 
another set of relations. 

These two currents of human progress do 
not seem now to intermingle. On the one side 
we have Christian prayers for the departed as in 
organic unity with ourselves. As to the other, 
we have only conjecture, but we cannot think 
away sympathy and love, and that longing 
which is prayer. There appears no bridge 
upon which we can travel across from our side, 
and return to report ; or if any have gone over 
and returned, they have not been allowed to 
report, or have been unable to report from the 
inadequacy of language, or have refrained from 
reporting from the conviction that it would be 
no boon to those still surviving. That there is 
any frequent passage from the other side to 
ours, is a conclusion without evidence worthy 
of respect. Each portion of the human race 
moves on in its own light, and the ultimate 
coalescence of these two streams of human 
history must be as much a craving for one as 
for the other. They, the departed ones, as well 
as we, must still mentally cry, '' How long, 
how long? " and show thus that they are our 
brethren still. 



- POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 85 

In our day the conviction is becoming 
more and more strong and steady that we 
must make more of this present world ; that 
it is full of wrongs that may be righted ; that 
it is possible so to modify or reconstruct the 
social state as that comfort shall be more gen- 
erally diffused, human intelligence be clari- 
fied and enriched, the conditions and oppor- 
tunities for dcA^elopment and elevation be 
made more universal ; and, as a consequence, 
that the loving spirit which ties together this 
human brotherhood may revive or strengthen, 
assert its ideal vigor, without artificial impedi- 
ments and superinduced restraints. 

Many are trying to devise means by which 
all this can be measurably accomplished. 
The difficulty, confusion and uncertainty arise 
from our inability to gather all the facts 
required for a trustworthy induction, and to 
penetrate very far into the future. The 
threads which make the web of human 
history are too numerous, for any one to 
weave this changing web into the unchanging 
warp. Any anticipation must be scrutin- 
ized carefully. Hence the lesson to move 
cautiously, — not to uproot but to replace by 



86 MENS CHRISTI. 

development, — not to make efforts too abstract, 
and regarding only the immediate in space 
and time. The result that should never be 
lost sight of in all such efforts must be uni- 
versal and inclusive, and respect the entire 
human race. The immediate result must, 
indeed, be partial, and at first exclusive, and 
respect the more advanced peoples ; but this 
still with the view of the after result upon 
the outlying sections of the human brother- 
hood. Meanwhile, the two efforts may go 
on, in some way, pari passu ; the one so to 
improve the uncultured races on the earth 
as to prepare them for their after elevation ; 
the other to rectify, as we can, the social 
state of the more intelligent peoples. 

And along with all these efforts, let men 
not forget that, beneath all this, the divine 
energy is at work, and will surely accomplish 
its purpose. That while it will not crush 
human freedom, but will forever leave to man 
to determine the moral form of his activity, 
it still holds absolute control of the material 
content of human action, that this is caught 
up into the current of an irresistible wave that 
sweeps securely to its shore. This may be 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 5^ 

man's consolation for his own possible mis- 
takes, and keep alive his faith and cheerful- 
ness amid his own failures. That w^e are on 
the threshold of a revolution, either to be 
quiet or violent, that w^e are on the eve of 
great social changes, becomes yearly more 
and more probable. Insensibly almost, for 
the general knowledge, w^e, have been led to 
it ; and thus we recognize the divine mind, in 
human history, as well as in the physical 
evolution. 

A millennium is not to be hoped for. Suf- 
ficient Scriptural warrant for it is wanting, and 
there is no speculative warrant. The true 
interpretation of our mundane story, so far 
as we can comprehend it, is, that in it and by 
it moral good and evil are both being spirit- 
ualized. It is all important to see that this 
is true of the latter as well as the former. 
When moral evil shall have become pure — if 
we can think it, at length, to have become 
willful, and be known as a conscious and 
deliberate antagonism, — in the possibility 
that when on the eve of this last result for 
human thought, man may hesitate, and 
decline it in this pure form, as a possible 



MENS CHKISTI. 



mode of being, — in this alone is any specula- 
tive ground for the removal in thought of the 
contradiction. But this ground is still not 
secure, since we fail to see how pure evil has 
any power to make itself other than it is ; and 
since we see that, even in the immediate ante- 
cedent stage, the motive power of good, hav- 
ing undergone constant abatement, seems on the 
verge of extinguishment. External violence 
is either annihilation, or the annulment of 
human moral freedom; and means the re- 
calling by God of his own creative acts. 

But, on the other hand, that moral good 
is spiritualizing itself is more and more mani- 
fest. We are learning yearly, and with in- 
creasing rapidity, by what kind of activity 
human love, responding to the divine love 
should manifest itself. The spirit of evil has 
been found to be lurking in many an insti- 
tution, or part of the social fabric, long estab- 
lished, and primarily sprung from human 
selfishness. The sympathy of the morally 
good becomes, all the while, finer and more 
exquisite, and respects not only the physical 
needs of men and their requirements for 
enjoyment, but the subtler psychic disorders 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 89 

and diseased imaginations, — these needless 
tortures which the human soul has been 
inflicting upon itself and upon others. It 
strives to reach and remedy even these and 
is discovering methods by which to do it. 
To difl^use this disposition and ability to 
minister to the more recondite wants of man 
is part of the duty of those who already, in 
degree, possess it. Mankind will never be- 
come a true brotherhood until it reaches the 
ability as well as the disposition so to minister. 
Thus men may be united by subtler and 
stronger threads. 

The great fault of our existing social state 
is that it allows or furnishes too many fetters 
and restrictions upon moral freedom — by 
which term, here, we mean the ability to 
choose for its own sake, and from its own 
pure attractiveness moral good or evil. This 
restriction exists even in the simplest social 
conditions, where the external fetters seem 
to have been reduced to a minimum. It 
has been apparent in all actual attempts to 
realize an Utopia. In all such the self- 
seeking principle has sooner or later dis- 
played itself, and for its own ends forged 



90 MENS CHRISTI. 

restrictions for others. Nay, it exists even 
in the family itself. The parent has been 
tempted to carry his control of his child too 
far ; to seek to carry him his own way, as 
though his subjective view were the absolute 
truth ; to prolong authority beyond the period 
when human manhood should be respected 
and, allowed free self-assertion, be allowed to 
act according to its own convictions. Hoav 
parental control, absolutely needful at first, 
should be allowed to lapse by degrees into 
parental unrestraint is a most difficult concrete 
moral problem. But the former w^as carried 
by its own impetus too far in the primal 
human efforts for social organization, and we 
have had primogeniture, and the patriarchal 
and tribal systems, upon which were built 
national systems, which have only very slowly 
been emancipating themselves from the re- 
strictions laid upon them by the former ones ; 
and we see this process of emancipation going 
on in our own day. 

Thus the progress, through Avhich man 
has reached a larger personality, and succes- 
sively come to regard himself as member of a 
larger and still larger organism, first as mem- 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FT TT RE. 91 

berof a family, next as eitken of a state, and 
finally as member of a human brotherhood or 
a church, has had its own dialectic ; and as 
human society has improved itseK these re- 
strictions have become more numerous, com- 
phcated and subtle. Possibly, too, they have 
become by this very separation and diffiision, 
attenuated, weaker, and more removable. These 
restrictions are both natural and artificial, or 
conventional. The natural ones are founded 
in the essential human nature itself. The 
artificial ones grow out of the compHcations 
of the social state. Since artificial, they are 
removable bv the same voluntary- abihtv which 
imposed them, and the remedy can be sought 
and found. The former ones are profounder 
and need a more radical remedy. PoHtical. 
social, moral wisdom are needed for the first 
task, while religious motive-springs and mo- 
tives, alone can efiect the other. The one task 
is for all Christians as included in the state. 
The other is for them as members of the 
church. The two lines of activity must needs 
intermingle, and how to contrive or find the 
right relation of the two ftimishes a constant 
question of conscience for every Christian man. 



92 MENS CHKISTI. 

It would be a very easy matter to show at 
length how these fetters upon human moral 
freedom exist in the rude and rudest human 
societies. It is enough, here, to instance the 
defect in them of the requisite moral knowl- 
edge. Moral alternatives, indeed, exist in 
every conscious human soul, whether savage 
or civilized, i. e., he selects one course of activ- 
ity rather than another for other considera- 
tions than the immediate consequence of well- 
being or enjoyment to himself Unless the 
innate ability so to decide existed as a sub- 
stratum, further moral knowledge could not 
be built upon it, nor could altruistic maxims 
of conduct ever have come to be formulated. 
All moral knowledge is potential in the 
human soul as such. The sense of duty, how- 
ever obscured or distorted, lies ineffaceabty 
in the distinctively human structure, and 
only awaits development. The very posses- 
sion of language shows the possibility of ad- 
vance ; and although the real advance may 
have been too slow for exterior observation to 
detect, nevertheless there must be movement, 
either in advance or retreat. Nothing in 
man's social history, or in his psychical his- 



POSiSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 93 

tory, any more than in his physical history, 
is stationary. And one result of this move- 
ment is the discovery, by slow increments, 
by what kind of activity the innate principle of 
moral development should realize itself. Not 
until human society has made many steps in 
advance does the current of this moral history 
become clearer, and patent for observation, but 
it was all implicit before. All a 'posteriori ob- 
servation, patiently conducted, validates this 
a priori conclusion. 

The races which have gone very far along 
in this moral pathway can understand them- 
selves, and see what is still defective, and thus 
the speed of moral progress can be accelerated. 
As they are in the forefront of the onward 
movement, they do not need so much to un- 
derstand how they have reached this position, 
as to understand it fully, and to ask what is 
to be done with their present light. They 
find in their own condition too much igno- 
rance still, too many defects to make it seem 
a duty to thrust their political and social in- 
stitutions upon the races which linger behind 
them in the onward march. They must mend 
and perfect their own condition, ere they can 
sincerely advise it for others. 



94 MENS CHRISTI. 

The neglect of this accounts for the failure 
of so many missionar}^ and civilizing efforts. 
Into our intercourse with the less cultured 
peoples we carry our vices in the fore-front, 
and let them conceal our virtues, and this 
causes these virtues to be suspected of insin- 
cerity. ^'We ask for more real and winning 
results of your Christianity," the heathen 
say, '' before we are ready to adopt it ; or, if 
we do adopt it, it is for political ends, rather 
than because the results are such as to prove 
the truth of the cardinal principle which is 
recommended to us." 

The reformation, then, must begin at home. 
This is the burning need and longing which 
is ijow stirring all minds who long for such 
an Utopia as the religion of Christ suggests, 
or their own reason approves. 

In our highly complicated human society 
the restrictions upon moral freedom have 
become not only more numerous, but more 
refined and subtle. The ignorant and poor 
have been biassed by the pressure of physical 
want, or by instinctive antagonism to the 
pressure of the social exclusiveness of the 
educated and the rich. And these, again, are 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 95 

perpetually tempted to retain their privileges, 
and to sophisticate away the instinctive 
human craving for a more real brotherhood. 
How can one be morally free in the pure sense 
since the physical want is so imperious, and 
demands immediate gratification? How can 
one be morally free in the pure sense when 
possessed by long sufferance of a monopoly of 
earthly good things, and subtly tempted to 
retain them? 

The reform needed is vast and two-sided. 
Can these two forms of human temptation be 
made to neutralize each other and settle into 
an eqidlihnum ? AVhat can be done to remove 
either bias and bring the pure alternatives be- 
fore human moral choice? What can enable 
it to adopt the good, not for immediate self- 
interest, but because it is rational, and the 
alone form of an ideal state? And on the 
other hand what can be done, that it may not 
he forced into evil, but be free to identify itself 
with it for its own sake, for the attractiveness 
of spiritual independency ? Whether in such 
an actual condition, evil will not have lost 
its attractiveness is another question, but the 
faith that it may is the motive-spring of all 



96 . MENS CHRISTI. 

human moral effort. We must rescue all who 
now ignorantly choose the evil, and bring 
them to our side, and this we can do only by 
making the good supremely attractive. If 
any shall yet refuse, we can at least draw 
such a line as that they can be disting- 
uished on the one side, and not be, in our 
observation, intermingled with the crowds on 
the other. 

The needed reformation cannot be accom- 
plished by any one method. The web is too 
complicated for any one to unravel, and to 
eliminate what has confused the perfect pic- 
ture. We can only, bit by bit, straighten its 
distortions, and bring all to self-consistency 
and harmony. But if simultaneous efforts are 
made by many, each individual or group hav- 
ing before it its own portion to be rectified, 
w^e can bring about the conditions for its ulti- 
mate, or, at least, comparative symmetrization. 
Hence we can but remove one social excres- 
cence at a time. But cautious effort is indi- 
cated. What is needed is a reformation that 
will bring about a revolution insensibly and 
make every one content with it. Sudden revo- 
lutions and wars are violent remedies, some- 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 97 

times needful, but bring their own debris of 
consequences to be removed ere the ground is 
clear for onward progress. Human intelli- 
gence, guided by love, not only will carry us 
in a smoother career, but in one swifter, than 
will any physical violence. The civilized na- 
tions are coming to see that war is a needless 
dialectic, and physical violence among the 
needy classes in the civilized societies is by 
many disavowed, or thought of only as a last 
despairing resort. It behooves the educated 
classes to see that they are not driven to this, 
and to seek to destroy the inclination rather 
than to crush the outbreak. 

This is not the place nor time to discuss any 
immediate proposed measures. I have only 
sought to indicate what should be the aim, 
and what the moving-spring in all individual 
or concerted effort. 

But, on the other hand, we must not forget 
that all this human effort after a more satis- 
fying social state, which sh^ll make men freer, 
and the whole less irrational, should not be 
made as an abstracted effort apart from the 
question whether it can have any, and if any, 
what effect upon the other stream of human 



98 MENS CHRISTI. 

history as it flows on in the realm of the de- 
parted. These are members of the human race 
as well as we. The final cause of all moral effort 
must then be something more than the pro- 
duction of a social state here on earth which 
will satisfy the reason when realized in an 
existing generation, or series of generations, 
which are soon to pass away to the other side, 
— but, besides, to produce an organism of 
which they, as well as we, shall be constituent 
members : 

'' They, without us cannot be made perfect." 
Is it then in our power to influence human 
history as it proceeds under the environment 
which is to ensue when these immortal beings 
close their eyes to the immediate phenomenal 
world? Were this last all in all, it seems 
not much matter in what state we are, or into 
what imagined immunity from present sorrows 
we can urge the coming generations. To 
know that we shall have gone over this tortur- 
ing process for their problematical benefit 
alone is a pessimistic conclusion, assaulting 
our cheerfulness and deadening our energy. 
But once arouse the hope or impart the con- 
viction that our present improvement and 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 99 

their future improvement can react upon the 
foregone generations, and an optimistic feehng 
is aroused, and we can be cheerful under any 
sacrifices. 

It is just here that Christian philosophy 
shows itself profounder than the philosophy 
which underlies many projected political and 
social movements. It draws its conclusion 
from a larger induction. It gives a more ex- 
haustive definition of humanity, and thinks 
of all his possible relations to the universe as 
as well as of these present ones. It gives per- 
manent and absolute value to human char- 
acter, or rather to the human soul as possessing 
this character, instead of regarding him as a 
mere link in a physical or logical chain. It 
is thus individualistic, as well as socialistic. It 
regards the organism, not as an abstraction 
having completeness for the aesthetic demand 
only, but as made up of individual souls, each 
a microcosm in itself, reflecting, as it endures, 
more and more perfectly the macrocosm. It 
thinks the highest in man, not that he can 
feel and think and know, but that he can 
love and enjoy. He who can love purely and 
persistently is thereby congener to the Highest, 



100 MENS CHRISTI. 

and a grander creation than all these systems 
of stars and nebulse that fill the illimitable 
space ; and the present aim of Christianity is to 
remove all obscurations from the vision of this 
love, that its bliss may be secure. It recog- 
nizes not only that physical sympathy exists 
and binds together all human life, and all 
animal life as well ; not only that mental sym- 
pathy exists, and that the field of knowledge 
is common property, but that moral sympathy 
exists and should have its fetters removed, 
and a truer development be made possible, and 
thus a finer and more spiritual union come to 
be. 

If, then, in the realm of the departed, 
human history still proceeds, it must be in- 
fluenced by the streams which are continually 
pouring into it from the living generations. 
If a purer and stronger love, or an increasing 
increment of spiritual strength shall character- 
ize these successive inflowings, the principle of 
good must be thereby strengthened, and the 
speed of the entire moral progress be accele- 
rated. 

If human life here on earth have any 
meaning other than physical for the in- 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 101 

dividual, it is that it is the occasion, or the 
condition for moral choice or probation, some- 
times consciously made, and sometimes made 
unconsciously and obscurely, and in depths 
which exterior intelligence cannot penetrate. 
And if the existence after death have any 
significance, it must be in part that it fur- 
nishes the conditions for the development of 
the moral or loving principle, for the invigo- 
ration of the moral status, and the possibility 
of indefectibility for such as have on earth 
committed themselves to this alternative. 
That the knowledge of God, and of the divine 
self-limitation, whereby the human race has 
been morally reached, must be afforded to all 
who have passed beyond the veil follows as a 
corollary from the admission of the organic 
unity of mankind. Not otherwise can the 
utmost potentiality of the creature be elicited. 
That the ignorant, degraded and seemingly 
neglected ones shall be afforded this knowl- 
edge, follows ; or else we divide mankind, or 
even the morally good, into two organisms, 
with an impassable wall of separation, and 
we have another dualism with its attendant 
difficulties. 



102 MENS CHRISTI. 

But, while ultimate assimilation shall thus 
be reached by all having the quality of moral 
good, and thus it be literally true that none 
are saved but through the knowledge of Christ, 
and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the obli- 
gation is none the less to accelerate the speed 
of the progress. Hence we are adding to the 
strength of good by seeing to it that the 
generations pass away from the earth as far 
advanced in good as possible. It will not do 
for love to slumber and be inactive. Thereby 
it is weakened as love. The divine love itself 
requires for its satisfaction that it be met by 
human responsive love, as the divine glory 
may be enriched by the glory of the creature. 
When Christian love relaxes in its zeal, it is 
in peril of extinguishment. Thereby the 
moral force as it may display itself in duties to 
the existing generations may undergo dimin- 
ution, and thence will follow the very mental 
ignorance and physical evils we are seeking to 
modify. Thus Christian love may be indi- 
rectly remedial by removing our social imper- 
fections, and directly remedial by diffusing 
itself, and strengthening the principle of 
good. By the latter effort it reaches the de- 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTUKE. 103 

parted generations, and thus hastens on the 
consummation. 

How to apportion one's activity to bring 
about one result or the other is a question for 
the individual soul, as such. But it is also 
a question for concerted effort. Here the 
doctrine of the Christian Church comes in, 
as an institution enabling such concerted 
effort. It must needs respect both purposes. 
Very perplexing problems at once arise. How 
far shall it identify itself with any movement 
for social improvement originating beyond 
itself? Under what restrictions, with due 
regard to other divine institutions, shall it 
originate such efforts ? And this again brings 
up the prior questions : how it shall define 
itself, and what is its function in the world ? 
How far has it an unchangeable constitution ? 
What are the possibilities, without sacrificing 
or maiming this constitution, of its adapting 
itself to existing circumstances? And as its 
ministry must always be in the forefront of its 
efforts, what are the duties and limitations of 
this ministry ? 

Any one of these questions might supply a 
topic for an essay or a treatise. In the follow- 



104 MENS CHRISTI. 

ing lecture I shall touch them all, though 
but lightly. Nevertheless I shall give an 
outline of what ought to be the consecutive, 
or logical treatment, and might be an exhaust- 
ive treatment of the same, — the denomination 
of which will be " the functions of the Chris- 
tian ministry." 



LECTURE IV. 

THE FUIv^CTIONS OF THE CHEISTIAN MINISTRY. 

Man regarded as simply an individual is 
but a poor being. He only rises in the 
scale of our regard and becomes richer by 
virtue of his relations to others, and through 
these he is capable of an endless amplifica- 
tion. In order to this physical, mental, so- 
cial, moral and religious instincts, or involun- 
tary proclivities are implanted in his structure. 
These are elicited by an activity upon him 
from or through his environment, or by more 
direct and mystical influence, but there is 
that in him which immediately responds, so 
that he voluntarily acquiesces in the quick- 
ening determination. It is a most interest- 
ing enquiry, or branch of science, which 
notes that there is a premonition of much 
of this in the stratum of existence immedi- 
ately below him ; — in the animal kingdom. 
Even here, the individual rises to a higher 
definition as member of a species, and some- 
times of a commonwealth, and we have the 

105 



106 MENS CHRISTI, 

possibility of our own social, political and 
moral conditions pre-imaged. 

In consequence of these instincts in hu- 
manity, the members of a human family 
cling together. That they do so under modi- 
fications, as other animals do not, to the end 
of life, is because man is also, as they are 
not, a religious animal, and therefore capable 
of a finer and more permanent tie. Unknow- 
ing why, the members of a family feel and 
act as though they were in some sense one; 
and the conflicting interests afterwards arising, 
may weaken, but do not destroy the tie. The 
opposing or centrifugal influences are superin- 
duced, and change with the change of cir- 
cumstances, while the centripetal drawing is 
incessant, and never entirely unfelt. 

In the social fabric, or the political state, 
personality develops into still further impli- 
cations. Here each individual has been limited 
in order to be enlarged. He has parted with 
something of his individuality, in order to 
receive in return something of more value 
to himself than that he has parted with. 
He has lost something of his liberty, and 
come to feel his dependence upon others, 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 107 

but sees that others have also become de- 
pendent upon him, and that the sphere of 
his own activity has been widened rather 
than narrowed, since it reaches flirther from 
himself. This more compKcated inter-relation 
is S3aiibolized by divers social, external and 
visible aggregations, and by the created gov- 
ernments. These are the symbols of the unity 
and common interests of the individuals of 
the same. 

Men, possessed by similar ideas, or convic- 
tions, feel this to be also a bond, and a finer one. 
These convictions guide or rule their activity, 
and they invariably invent some symbol which 
shall indicate and keep fast this, their com- 
mon possession. When any one becomes 
absorbed in a thought, new or old, he seeks 
sympathy to strengthen his own possession 
of it, to confirm it as a true possession, to 
aid him in the endeavor to extend it. 

In proportion as the sympathy springs 
from a more and more valuable possession, 
does it more urgently seek to secure itself 
in this by extending it. Eminently this is 
true of the religious relation. This ever 
seeks to fasten securely together its adherents. 



108 MENS CHRISTI. 

It combines often with the social and ethical 
relations, and makes them to minister to its 
uses and its aims. It seeks to gather into 
its own unity whatever is needful* for its 
own sustentation. That the religious bond 
is token of a profounder tie, is shown by the 
fact, that it survives amid the passing away 
of political structures, and social integrations. 
It fixes its own thoughts by symbols, and 
the permanence of those symbols in the his- 
tory of all religions is another proof that 
this tie has reached to a profounder depth 
in human nature than any other. When 
conflict has come this has, in the main, been 
found to be the victor. 

If the cardinal principle of this religion is 
love, it has the utmost increment of vitality, 
and is, from its very definition, immortal. 
Superadded to, and possibly coalescing with 
other bonds, it becomes, concretely, the strong- 
est possible tie to bind men together. And 
if its sympathetic aim respects the whole 
human race, through it is the largest develop- 
ment and ultimate definition of personality 
reached. For while all these other instincts 
respect the transient, this alone respects the 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 109 

permanent human relation. Families may 
fall to pieces, states may crumble and dis- 
appear, the subjective apprehension of truth 
may deal with changing object-matter, — but 
the bond of loving souls is indestructible. 

As possessors of new thoughts, as having 
new aims for activity and new emotions, 
all unified by this immortal bond of love, 
the follwvers of Jesus Christ were tied to- 
gether by the deepest and strongest possible 
sympathy. They saw that it need not con- 
flict with other ties, but if it ever should, 
these must give way. Here was an econom- 
ical motive, added to the instinctive prompt- 
ing, why they should consociate together, and 
create some symbol of this, their unique 
common possession; and this intended not 
only to mark themselves to each other, and 
to the alien ones, as a distinct people, to 
keep them true to each other, and arrest 
any propensity to wander away, or grow 
weak in their allegiance, but to strengthen 
the sympathetic bond itself. Of their own 
impulse they would have done this. 

Foreseeing this, and laying hold of these 
indestructible propensities of human nature. 



110 MENS CHRISTI. 

their Master and Teacher gave them what 
they needed, what they must have, and what 
they . would have created for themselves, a 
church. They were already an ecclesia, having 
subjective fitness, though arising from exter- 
nal selection, but at first, no objective bond 
or symbol of their allegiance existed. They 
could not be left to be bound together by 
the conscious and subjective tie only. They 
were not yet ripe for that. They still were 
not morally and religiously strong enough to 
be left to their own spontaneity. They needed 
to be guarded from external assault and 
internal temptation. Their imperfect wisdom 
needed to be supplemented by a deeper, and 
more far-seeing wisdom. They could not reach 
the intended perfection by a leap, but must go 
through a period of trial to bring out and in- 
crease their strength. And so he gave them 
beforehand what they would have invented 
for themselves, external marks and symbols; 
and, as coming from him, these should not 
be changeable by any after caprice. And 
these marks were so carefully chosen as to 
be profoundly symbolic. In the full signifi- 
cance of the rites of Baptism and the Holy 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. Ill 

Supper we have all that is distinctive in the 
new revelation from God, all the profound 
truth now made known, appropriated and 
felt, imaged, and discoverable. Thus they 
have obligation not only as tokens of Christian 
profession, but as having teaching power, as 
preservatives of the truths they veil. Even 
for these reasons alone they must be un- 
changeable. And if, beside, there can be vindi- 
cated the doctrine that they were made chan- 
nels of divine grace, media for influences 
mystical and beneath knowledge, this is still 
another reason to secure their permanency. 
If this new consociation is to exist as one, 
there arises thus the utmost need and the 
highest possible inducement to preserve these 
marks, symbols, or sacraments in their in- 
tegrity. 

And besides, if this new society, this 
ecclesia, is to exist not only to strengthen 
the inner bond which ties its members to- 
gether, but if by virtue of this very tie 
they must long for further sympathy, and 
gather new adherents and friends from the 
outlying world, there emerges another reason 
Avhy they should be bound by these visible and 



112 MENS CHRISTI. 

unchangeable marks. Thereby only can they 
seek unitedly, as well as individually, to 
extend their compass; and organized efforts 
can become possible, of more power to work 
changes in the exterior world than any num- 
ber of smaller, less carefully meditated, or 
individually impulsive efforts. 

But, — on the other hand, — while these 
marks, symbols, or sacraments of the new 
society are needful for those yet on the path- 
way towards, and not yet at the summit of 
the intended perfection, it is in accordance 
with the cardinal principle of the new re- 
ligion itself that they should be as few as 
possible, and not from their number consti- 
tute a bondage. Other rites and observations 
might thereafter be superimposed, arising from 
new requirements, but these must be transi- 
tory in their nature, and changeable or re- 
movable by those who may have as much 
wisdom as those who imposed them. The 
very idea or conception of love, as in its 
perfection pure spontaneity, requires that it 
should gradually relax and remove its own 
fetters. The weaker love, the more need of 
laiv and external guidance. The stronger the 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 113 

love, the less need of law ; and for perfect 
love there is no law, for it is at one with 
the divine love. Hence the profound wisdom 
of Jesus Christ in creating only these two 
marks of discipleship, and making them 
obligatory. These must remain as means for 
identification, because, till the end, as far as 
we can see, there is to be antagonism, and 
conflict with hostile influences. 

In admitting, more or less intelligently, 
all this, Christian people have been almost 
universally agreed, and nearly every self- 
formed association of professed followers of 
Jesus Christ has retained the rites of Baptism 
and the Lord's Supper. Anything else, in 
external observance, they have concluded, 
may be changed or abandoned, but these may 
not be. 

In the earliest Christian days, w^hen all 
were rejoicing in their new possession, the 
impulse was universal and irrepressible to 
impart to others the knowledge of their own 
riches. Hence all Christians were preachers 
of the gospel. And it would seem, from the 
historic evidence in our possession, that they 
also, of their own individual impulse, or under 



114 MENS CHRISTI. 

guidance, administered, when their preaching 
was successful, the initiatory Christian rite. 
In this consists what is called the universal 
Christian priesthood, from which any further 
priesthood arises by limitation. They were 
mediators between God and the world, and 
their very love made this mediation watchful, 
active and incessant. But it soon became ap- 
parent, and it arises also from the nature of 
the case, that the disposition and permission 
to preach and teach and administer Baptism 
might be unwisely used. And thus, on a priori 
grounds, there appears the need, for the purity 
of the society, of a limitation to this permis- 
sion ; and so it came to pass, obviously or 
insensibly, that these high privileges came to 
be exercised by those thought best fitted to 
use them wisely. The teaching of the more 
competent came to be regarded as more trust- 
worthy and authoritative, and their superior 
discretion in bestowing the rite of initiation 
to be admitted. But the inherent right, how- 
ever limited for economical reasons, still 
remained. All this might be amply illus- 
trated from Christian history. 

There is no historical evidence that the 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 115 

administration of the other Christian rite or 
sacrament was ever general or thrown open. 
Here a more marked limitation seems to be 
required from the necessity of the situation. 
The discretion needed to distinguish those 
who were fitted to share in this observance 
was not the common Christian possession. 
The benefit of this sacrament, and, indeed, 
its ideal and perfect administration itself, 
requires that those uniting in it should be 
free from unrepented sin, and should be one 
in the possession of the sacrificial mind, and 
thus be competent, in the only profound and 
true sense, to ''shew forth the Lord's death." 
If this should be wanting in all those joining 
in the observance, it would become a mere 
mechanical performance. Therefore its ad- 
ministration must be entrusted to the wisdom 
of those competent to judge of the fitness of 
those who propose to unite in it, and these 
are supposed to have been trained for this 
very purpose. Thus the profound significance 
of the rite itself required that it should not 
be thrown open to the general impulse. The 
requirements of law as limiting spontaneity 
are here most apparent. Thus we have a 



116 MENS CHRISTI. 

speculative vindication of the universal Chris- 
tian practice of allowing the administration of 
this rite only to a limited and specially fitted 
priesthood. 

Historically we learn that the universal 
Christian priesthood was thus limited. On 
these a priori grounds, for some minds quite 
as convincing as the others, we learn why it 
should have been so limited. The question 
now arises how and when it became thus 
limited. Can we trace back this limitation 
to any authority not to be declined? Can 
we connect it immediately or mediately to 
any prescription of the Founder of the re- 
ligion himself? Was its evolution, though 
acknowledged to be gradual, presided over by 
acknowledged authority? Did Jesus Christ, 
in short, add a third requirement to the 
economic dispensation, and create a ministry, 
and did his inspired apostles guide its devel- 
opment ? That his eleven disciples, and Paul, 
claimed to possess authority, and a commission 
delegated by Jesus Christ, seems apparent 
enough from the New Testament narratives, 
and other writings. Concretely, then, it 
would seem that a ministry did exist before 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 117 

the Christian sacraments. For these only 
came to be, actually, on and after the day of 
Pentecost. This body of men were held to be 
the bearers of the trust in a higher sense than 
were the common disciples. Tlie very defer- 
ence paid them is evidence of this. If facts 
are as good evidence as prescriptions, and 
interpret the latter, it does seem that they 
were left in possession of plenary powers, and 
that the authority possessed by their Master 
was delegated to them, and that for the wise 
exercise of it they were promised the mystical 
guidance of the Holy Spirit. And if this 
mystical influence respected a particular 
Divine purpose, if there be valid ground for 
holding to the inspiration of any selected 
ones in a higher sense, and for more special 
aims, than the universal inspiration of the 
Holy Spirit, then this alone would give them 
such authority and demand tlie corresponding 
respect. If we admit more than ordinary in- 
sight in their written words, we cannot confine 
their inspiration to these, but must think it 
to pervade their entire mental consciousness, 
to guide them in their ordinary speech and 
in their prescriptions. No separation, in the 



118 MENS CHEISTI. 

nature of the case seems possible. Whether 
these prescriptions were for the immediate 
situation only, or were permanent in their 
intent and hence in their obligation, and, if 
the latter, how far flexible, is a question that 
may be profoundly argued, as to which Chris- 
tian men seem now in hopeless disagreement, 
but which will one day be satisfactorily 
answered. 

That what the apostles did, as well as what 
they said, arose from the needs of the existing 
situation is indubitable; They gave commis- 
sions, and created offices according as the 
need was apparent. There is no evidence that 
they trusted to a prior prescription of Jesus 
Christ. Rather, they followed the monitions 
of their own consciousness, divinely illu- 
mined. Some of these offices were transient 
and passed away insensibly, and, as far as we 
can learn, without remonstrance. But others 
either met with no shocks, or withstood all 
shocks and became permanent. When the 
former ones had passed away, and the current 
of history becomes clear, we find still sur- 
viving some, the origin of whose prescription 
is related in the New Testament. The ministry 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 119 

separated itself naturally into a threefold 
function. One set of activities after another 
was parted with by the governing powers. 
First, they disengaged from themselves the 
care required for physical relief, and created 
an order of deacons. Next, they abandoned 
the work of education and edification, growing 
all the while more urgent in its needs, to a 
more carefully selected body of men, reserv- 
ing to themselves still the oversight ; and 
ultimately there came to exist, somehow, 
sharers in the task of oversight, who became 
in this respect, their successors. Thus natur- 
ally grew up the Christian ministry. This 
threefoldness of function perennially exists, 
whether exercised by men alike in name and 
office, or anyhow distinguished. What might 
be confined to one ivas separated into three, 
and what is exercised by three may conversely 
be absorbed into one. Even when a threefold 
order is continued, the functions necessarily 
run into each other. Hence, from the first, the 
deacons authoritatively preached and baptized, 
and when thought to have sufficient wisdom 
were elevated to another function, and en- 
trusted with the right to administer the Holy 



120 MENS CHEISTI. 

Supper. This function, as we have seen, 
required great wisdom, and a training in this 
produced a fitness for the required oversight, 
the need of which perennially exists, and is 
always exercised by some. That with the 
changing conditions of mankind new adap- 
tations may be required, and thus that the 
ministry must have a kind of flexibility, is 
indubitable, and can be historically illustrated. 
The separate functions may become less 
strongly marked and be barely distinguishable. 
Hence, comparing our present with the primi- 
tive ministry, we find much modification, 
and that, practically, the intermediate order 
has absorbed into itself much that was at first 
distinctive of the Diaconate and of the Episco- 
pate. 

On these grounds it may be held that a 
ministry is a mark of the Christian church 
as well as the two rites of Baptism, and the 
Supper of the Lord. 

Moreover as these two rites were symbolic, 
so the apostles themselves devised a symbol, 
but one less profound in significance, of the 
separation for the uses of this ministry ; and 
we have the rite of laying on of hands in 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 121 

ordination. And if the Christian brotherhood 
is to be kept bound together there seems no 
reason why it should ever decline this any 
more than it may the observance of the two 
sacraments, although the authority for it is one 
step farther removed from the source. Other- 
wise, the bond of union is weakened, external 
unity impaired, and there become divergent 
threads of history that have to be caught up 
and bound together again. 

In all this, is the argument for the need, 
the existence, and the mode of perpetuation 
of the Christian ministry. I have sought thus 
to state it on grounds, for the most part specu- 
lative, or a priori, leaving to other hands the 
ampler historical illustration of the same. 
The argument is founded upon the needs of 
the economy, and endeavors to show it as a 
system of means entirely natural, truly rational, 
and ideally fitted to accomplish a still ulterior 
result, namely, the perfection of the Chris- 
tian character as the condition for the process 
of regeneration ; even though we admit that 
that ulterior result may be reached through a 
system less complete. God overrules men's 
mistakes, and accomplishes his loving purposes, 



122 MENS CHRISTI. 

even though men misuse their freedom in not 
following his true prescriptions, or are ignorant 
of them. 

And now, without further treatment of 
these debated topics, let us ask what are 
the functions of the Christian ministry such 
as we have it. And I do not mean by this 
how we shall distinguish the differing func- 
tions of bishops, priests and deacons ; but 
how, since they all have one end in view, 
into what different sorts of activities their 
common work is divisible. 

And first, they are in our own day, the 
administrators of the Christian sacraments, 
and usually the conductors in Christian wor- 
ship. The propensity exists in human nature 
itself not to enter into the full religious 
significance of these mediatorial observances, 
and sometimes it may be lost sight of almost 
entirely, and the administration or conduct 
become a mere set of mechanical acts. We 
need not think that they are invalid, in 
consequence, or destitute of effect upon others ; 
but if the performance has lost its inner soul, 
their beneficial effect upon others is greatly 
diminished. The people readily detect the 



CHRISTIAN MINISTKY. 123 

difference between a lifeless and heartless 
utterance, and one in which the thought 
and feeling of the utterer affect even the tone 
of his voice, and produce an influence upon 
others mystical and not easy to measure. 
And the effect upon a Christian minister of 
a superstitious view of his own functions, 
by which he regards himself as a magical 
medium between God and man (a notion 
often the result of a shallow theory), is to 
harden the utterance of such an one and 
make it less sympathetic. He hurries over 
his work in a perfunctory way, may not rule 
his own thoughts meanwhile, and displays 
no emotion, or may not feel it. That in 
some a view so low as this of the function 
of the Christian minister sometimes exists as 
a justification of his methods, is probably 
true. The propensity towards it always exists 
in our poor human nature, which is never 
entirely rid of superstition, from which the 
extremest culture has never entirely emanci- 
pated a single soul. This, which we cul- 
tured ones fight against, in other monitions 
of the same, requires especially to be struggled 
with in the uses of the ministry, and can. 



124 MENS CHKISTI. 

perhaps, be most successfully supplanted by 
displaying its higher ends and finer purposes, 
which are ethical or religious. 

An influence, somewhat counteracting to 
this propensity, is supplied by the needs of 
Christian preaching. Here the requirement 
is obvious that the minister should come into 
more immediate mental relation with his 
auditors, and avail himself of whatever re- 
sources he possesses. But here, too, the need- 
ful thought processes, and whatever feeling 
may have accompanied them, may have been 
entirely expended in the composition of the 
written sermon, and its delivery after all, 
become a mere perfunctory performance, a 
task to be got over, and excluded from the 
mind. The vehicle of utterance may be dis- 
regarded or undervalued, and the mystical 
influence and effect of speech and sound be 
entirely missed. In preaching, surely emotion 
is to be called forth, as well as the thought 
imparted. The purpose of it is such knowledge 
as will determine activity, and as will make 
the motive-spring of such activity warm 
and strong. The power of sweet sound, when 
guided by imagination, to sink into the very 



CHEISTIAX MI^'I^TEY. 125 

dejDths of the human souL is seen in the 
charm of music, and well-nnjdnlated speech 
may have a similar cliarm. The nitntal 
proposition is vtilt-d in the sensuous utter- 
ance, and this last may pt-netrate more 
deeply into the r«:>ots of being than the 
other. A t<:>ne. sweet and tender, informed 
by soul emotion, kindles often into a fire 
the slumbering thought CA^en of the audi- 
tor : and calls forth its own sympathetic 
response. 

According to his aljilitA^ it is incumbent 
upon every Christian preacher to make use 
of this power. And fjr this end jjhysical 
culture is not to be despised, though it is 
still required that this should be at the 
service of Christian love. 

And the thought which he is thus effect- 
ively to utter ought to be his oirn. T<j be 
able to enshrine the th':>ught of another in 
this sensuous A'ehicle and make the latter 
exquisitely symbolic, is a rare natural gift, 
and the result of genius or ins|:»iration ; 
though the ability in lesser degree may be 
acquire-:! V»y art and training. A more than 
ordinary vividness of imaginatio/i is required 



126 MENS CHRISTI. 

to enable one to infuse his own soul into 
the words of another. The variant ability 
to do this marks the different degrees of 
excellence and effectiveness in the reading 
of Holy Scripture. It is a good test, ceteris 
paribus, of one's imaginative power. 

But it is by no means a rare ability to 
utter one's oiun thought effectively. In pro- 
portion as its truth is recognized it may be 
felt, and the mode of utterance be affected 
accordingly. Almost every one can be elo- 
quent when stirred by strong emotion, and 
the spontaneous modulation is likely to be 
true. Any thought then, to have this easy, 
unartificial, and effective utterance should be 
one's own possession, and not a borrowed 
one. 

I have no aoubt that one reason why 
we have much poor preaching is because 
many clergymen, in composing their sermons 
in their seclusion, avail themselves of others' 
thoughts rather than of their own. This 
propensity is measurably qualified in extem- 
pore, or rather, impromptu preaching, but even 
here one's own repertory may be so poor 
that he is obliged to reproduce what others 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 127 

have said, in borrowed words or stereotyped 
phrases, without having fused them in the 
alembic of his own mind, and given them 
subjective form, and hence new life, making 
thus the human mind in its full definition 
the medium. This method of preparation 
may have become so habitual as to create 
a distrust in the value of the preacher's own 
thoughts ; and in consequence his sermons 
are almost helplessly mechanical, and fail 
of becoming truly spiritual modes of rela- 
tion. 

This propensity may have been created, 
or fostered by the mode of the antece- 
dent preparation, by the defects in the theo- 
logical instruction. If this has consisted in 
the mere offering and acceptance of cut and 
dried propositions, coming from no mat- 
ter what authority, which the recipient is 
expected to take for granted and reproduce 
as he can, with no effort to appropriate 
them in thought — to test, to see, to feel their 
meaning and their truth, it is not to be ex- 
pected that every such one will readily break 
over these bounds, and tell to his after con- 
gregations, only what he knows and feels to 



128 MENS CHRISTI. 

be true. In this way a faulty mode of in- 
struction degrades the function of the Chris- 
tian ministry. If our preachers would simply 
tell what they know, what thoughts have 
been suggested and feelings aroused by their 
own response to God's love in Christ, by their 
contemplation of humanity and its needs, their 
sermons would not fail to find adequate re- 
ponse. 

It follows, likewise that this vivid Chris- 
tian experience, this love of Christ, this love 
of man, and acquaintance with his ethical 
and religious defects and wants, must in dif- 
ferent grades affect the efficiency of the min- 
ister in another one of his functions, viz : the 
pastoral care. 

The helplessness of many clergymen in 
this respect is something mournful. They are 
ready, in various degrees of readiness, and from 
differing or mixed motives, to minister to the 
physical wants of their human brethren, the 
objects of their own pastoral charge in partic- 
ular, but when called upon to minister to 
mental and religious needs, to deal with the 
disorders of the soul, they often draw back 
with an inward consciousness of inadequacy. 



CHKISTIAN MINISTRY. 129 

They hardly apply to themselves, as it might 
be shown they have a right to do, their Lord's 
promise, that it shall be given them what to 
speak. They forget that the Holy Spirit is 
theirs. But the Holy Spirit works through 
human active agencies, and not through men 
as passive machines. He still respects the na- 
tive power, does not overcome it, though He 
may stimulate it to the utmost of its exercise. 
The personal equation, here, is susceptible of 
all manner of degrees ; and for some the abil- 
ity thus to minister must be confined to a 
narrow range. Our own church has felt this 
difficulty, and wisely allows the troubled soul 
to go beyond its own pastor for relief. Finely 
competent confessors are as rare as fine preach- 
ers. But as a proper culture may have aided 
in producing these, so a proper culture may 
aid in the production of those, and enable a 
greater ability than is usual in this line of 
pastoral duty. This is a department of prep- 
aration for ministerial work too much, hith- 
erto, neglected. The Roman church has car- 
ried it to an extreme. An imitation of her 
method is not to be advised. A critique of it 
might be made to show that it is based upon a 



130 MENS CHKISTI. 

wrong theory, and that its results are to be 
deprecated. We, in our church, must, for this 
end, start ah initio, and think out the method 
from our own starting point, and under the 
limitations of our own theology, which, as a 
unified system, is not identical with that of 
the Roman church. The difference between 
two possible methods may be slightly indica- 
ted from the very significance of the names 
given to this branch of theological culture. 
With the Roman church it is " Moral Theol- 
ogy," i. e., theology so far as it is determined 
by the received ethic of that church, which 
can be shown to be practically, if not theoreti- 
cally, a mere ethic of expediency, which has 
such flexibility that it effaces at times the 
absolute moral distinctions. With us the 
name is, or should be ^' Theological Ethics," 
i. e., moral distinctions are taken to be abso- 
lute and immutable, recognized by human rea- 
son, and furnishing ground for the exhibition 
of the divine justice. And the inquiry is, 
how the maxims for human conduct thence 
deducible, are affected by the incoming of 
Christian doctrine, by the revelation of God 
and his purposes in Christ, in consequence of 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 131 

which the whole Hfe-plan must be changed. 
New maxnxLS spring up, changes are made in 
the order and rank of those already received, 
and thus, in some degree, the details of duty 
are marked out, and reasons- given for all 
this modification. 

But for those of our clergy who are in any 
degree competent, this ministration to the soul 
wants of the troubled, perplexed, doubting or 
despairing ones is the very finest part of the 
ministerial ofiice, — a true spiritual mediation. 
What wisdom and skill, what care and pa- 
tience are needed to lead the struggling soul 
out of any " Slough of Despond," or to tear 
away the meshes of a false philosophy, and 
enable an escape, to let in the light of divine 
truth, b}^ degrees, into the darkness of doubt ! 
When one is successful in this, there becomes 
the greatest boon that one human being can 
give to another, and it arouses in the recipient 
the deepest feeling of gratitude, a sense of 
obligation that lasts through life. This reali- 
zation of the pastoral tie is, perhaps, the deep- 
est and most enduring personal relation ever 
existing here on the earth. The minister, to 
be successful in accomplishing it, must not 



132 MENS CHEISTI. 

only be acutely sympathetic for ordinary men- 
tal distress, but so wise as to enable sympathy 
for subtler and acuter agony, must be able to 
see symptoms of internal disorder, when un- 
suspected by the sufferer himself. He must be 
himself strong in the faith, and able to give a 
reason for it, not by cutting off inquiry and 
doubt, but by showing that the doubt leads 
no whither, or into more impenetrable dark- 
ness ; must be strong in his love, for love is 
contagious in proportion to its strength, and 
that is measured by its capability for sacrifice. 
Christian love manifested sometimes wins and 
cures, when all other remedies fail, and one is 
drawn to meet it by a compulsion that is 
divine. 

But there is still another function of the 
Christian ministry, — that to which I alluded in 
my last lecture. These men are citizens of the 
state, as well as ministers of the church. And 
inasmuch as no change of moment, or great 
improvement in human conditions, can be 
effected but by concerted effort, or a wide- 
spread consent, these men cannot, or should 
not withhold themselves from co-operation 
with their fellow-citizens in any aim intended 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 133 

to move mankind one step further towards the 
realization of its brotherhood. As a class, the 
philanthropic impulse is probably as strong in 
them, if not stronger, than in any other, 
though it is often held back by conventional 
restraints, by an iron-bound conservatism, or 
by subtle temptations of self-interest. But 
normally this impulse ought to be stronger 
than in any other class, because the aim of 
their office goes beyond the mere temporal 
welfare of men, and respects their charac- 
ters, as determining their permanent welfare. 
Hence, more from this class, in proportion to 
its numbers, than from any other, take the 
lead in all effi^rts after social reform. The 
ultra-progressive is nurtured here as well as 
the ultra-conservative. Many, indeed, con- 
fine themselves to their own pecidium, to the 
narrow circle of their priestly and pastoral 
relations, as though they had no ties nor 
obligations beyond, and some strive to deepen 
the line of separation between the clergy and 
the laity, and exalt themselves into a caste^ 
instead of gladly effiicing it when they can 
legitimately do so. And others, from simple 
distrust in their own power to influence men, 



134 MENS CHEISTI. 

console themselves by thinking that they have 
no call of duty beyond their churchly rela- 
tion. They resolve to do what is incumbent 
upon them in this, and leave to God to take 
care of ulterior results, and work out his 
purposes upon human conditions. 

This narrow view, thus variously held, very 
often characterizes the procedure of young 
men just beginning the ministerial life. This, 
their self-imposed limitation, may come, indeed, 
from diffidence, and be confirmed by habit, 
but if so, it can be cured. But it may come 
from a theory of their office — shallow, and not 
fully honoring God and his methods of dealing 
with his creatures ; a theory which implies 
that the divine presence and the divine 
efficiency are confined to the circle and the 
prescribed rites of the church alone, and this 
'' church " sometimes thought in a very narrow 
definition. For if, indeed, the naive Christian 
mind, unbiassed, rejects a notion so narrow, 
and feels, as a corollary from the divine love 
itself, that no human beings can be disregarded 
in the divine mind, that God's plan respects 
the human race as such, and that he is urging 
a universal movement, that Christianity is 



CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 135 

only a special movement as means towards a 
universal one ; if religion is thought to belong 
to human nature itself, and cannot be eradi- 
cated therefrom, if its pre-suppositions are 
never absent as determining human activity, — 
then, since God works by known or providen- 
tial means, as well as through mystical influ- 
ences which human intelligence cannot follow, 
it is incumbent upon even his selected ones 
who constitute the '^ Ecdesia,'' to study this 
providential movement, and throw themselves 
into the current which God is urging to his own 
end. And shall the guardians and guides of 
the Christian people hold themselves back 
from this? Shall they blind themselves to 
these transcendent relations? It would seem 
that the privilege and the duty was especially 
theirs, not only to co-operate with any con- 
certed eflbrt for the improvement of human 
conditions, not only to acquiesce in and further 
any effort initiated beyond themselves, or be- 
yond even the church, — but, if they are indeed 
wiser, and have a wider outlook and more per- 
manent aims, to initiate such eflPort and to 
draw others into it, rather than to be them- 
selves drawn into efforts less profoundly 



136 MENS CHEISTI. 

meditated. But just here the knowledge of 
many of our clergy is deficient. They know 
so little beyond their particular line of activity, 
that they stand passive and irresolute amid 
the movements stirring around them. They 
have accepted their propositional theology, but 
know nothing or little of social facts, or 
political situations and indications ; know 
little of science — and some even foolishly 
decry it — not seeing that science is the pur- 
veyor to theology, and assists it in removing its 
own unhealthy growths ; and some even decry 
philosophy itself, not knowing that they have 
already accepted in trust some philosophy, and 
that a philosophy is implicit in all their theo- 
logical attainments. They need a larger culture. 
If the clergy are to hold their own in influencing 
human action, if they are to entitle themselves 
to respect in the coming times, our theological 
curricula must be greatly enlarged ; our semi- 
naries must be something more than mills 
turning out products of a monotonous same- 
ness, — rather, products of developed individu- 
alities, and able, as any others whatever, to 
cope with the practical questions becoming 
yearly more urgent. 



christia:^ ministry. 137 

We, in our own church, are so intensely 
conservative, that the commoner tendency is 
to linger beKincl in the onward progress. But 
the need, growing more manifest, will meet 
its supply in due time. They who shall urge a 
change in our methods will meet with oppo- 
sition. There is much debris to remove. We 
older ones feel ourselves entangled in it, but, 
since near our end, our energy is not sufficient. 
The coming generation, growing up with the 
sense of this need, as we did not, will venture 
farther than we have done, beyond the track 
so long beaten hard. But the old conservative 
inertia still weighs upon the young mind to 
keep it in the ruts, and our theological schools 
only slowdy yield to the outer pressure. 

The notion so long held, and still surviving, 
that in the early Christian days the Holy Spirit 
came once for all, and enlightened to the full 
the existing generation, which created a cle- 
positum of faith to be handed on through all 
time, unchangeable and needing no develop- 
ment, is slowly giving way before the pro- 
founder notion that the Holy Spirit is a per- 
ennial possession ; and that he is ours in every 
sense that he was theirs ; that he has been busy 



138 MENS CHRISTI. 

in the intervening time, guiding the thread 
of human history, in its spiritual and true 
advance, and that we, in our own generation, 
are wiser than any one that has preceded us, 
since that one that had inspired men for 
referees; — a thesis that can have ample specu- 
lative, historical, scriptural vindication, but 
whose antithesis dies hard. 

The very doubts, Avhich spring more and 
more abundantly as the years pass, furnish 
occasion for the victories of faith, and should 
never be shunned or dogmatically repressed. 
We grow wiser only through this dialectic. 
The victory over a doubt is a new illuminating 
addidamentum to the Truth itself Till the 
last the forms of error will grow more subtle, 
and till the last the wisdom and the skill to 
expose and vanquish them need to grow and 
will grow more subtle. 

Who, but the ministers, in the Church of 
Christ, ought to be the leaders, and the 
trusted ones, upholding the faith of the Chris- 
tian body, amid assaults whose severity we 
dream not of now? ''When the Son of Man 
cometh will he find faith on the earth ? " He 
will himself relieve the burden then, and put 



CHEISTIAN MINISTRY. 139 

an end to the trial. And the ministers of his 
church ought to be the ones to say : "We have 
kept these souls true and steady. Here are 
our ten talents." 



LECTUEE V. 



THE DOCTEINE OF '' A NATUEE IN GOD." 



Philosophers, as poets of the first order, 
are born, not made. That which distin- 
guishes them may be called a mental instinct, 
— an imperious intellectual demand for 
unity and self-coherence in all knowledge. 
An hiatus, or a problem of difficult solu- 
tion is an irritating spur which urges towards 
the filling up of the one, or the satisf3dng 
settlement of the other. The entirety of 
knowledge must be Avoven into an harmonious 
whole, the immanent relations of all whose 
elements are clearly seen, or at least divined, 
and hence the struggle after clear expression. 
In the philosophic mind the principle or 
category of causality, which rules all thought- 
movement, is as manifest as it is in the 
scientific mind. The difference is that the 
latter, as purely such, deals with only par- 
tial material. The craving for a unified sys- 
tem is not so strong, but that it often wil- 
fully shuts its eyes to other knowledge, which 

140 



''a nature in god." 141 

too must be incorporated for the full under- 
standing of its own. When science extends its 
view and takes in the entire field, it is 
obliged to become philosophic. Here, in this 
whole round or scope of knowledge, nothing 
is unimportant. In the endeavor, then, to 
weave into one piece, to unify all fact, all 
consciousness, all movement or change, these 
must be traced back to some antecedent 
origin or cause, which must account for 
their existence, their mutual relations, and 
their changing relations, or development. 
Something in the First Principle is not yet 
apprehended if any fact, or phase of con- 
sciousness refuses to march into line with 
the rest. No problem must be slurred over ; 
yet the temptation to do this is strong. 
Even the most encyclopedic minds find them- 
selves obliged to neglect something, or wil- 
fully do it, seduced by the charm of some 
solution which seems in other respects to 
satisfy. And just the perception of this causes 
others to reconsider the problem, and thus 
philosophy takes its advance. Some fresher 
intellect broods again over the dark spots, 
with a sublime discontent. It is a pity that 



142 MENS CHRISTI. 

it often expresses itself too soon, and has after- 
wards to undo its former work. It is a pity 
that the impulse to rush into publication in the 
earlier periods of the thought-history could 
not have been restrained ; or, at least, that 
the expression could not have been kept for 
a longer period, simply for the private con- 
venience. We see this illustrated in the his- 
tory of many of our philosophers. Schelling 
rushed into print early in life, and had after- 
wards to undo much of his former work. 
Even Fichte's thought can only be rightly 
apprehended in his later writings. And 
Hegel's was a constant growth, — though, in 
his case, after a satisfying centre, or method, 
was obtained, there was little afterwards to 
be undone ; but even he neglected some 
problems, or probed them not profoundly 
enough to win satisfaction and compel ad- 
herence. At the very best, in our conven- 
tional, cultured life, the desire for reputation, 
or even the purer craving for recognition, 
becomes a bias, more or less strong, to de- 
flect and trouble the pure thinking. 

I have been led to these remarks by hav- 
ing looked somewhat into the thought-sys- 



143 

tern of Jacob Boehme, as interpreted by 
Dr. Martensen. Here we have a native born 
philosopher, with few advantages of educa- 
tion and culture, in whose mind the great 
problems of knowledge and existence were 
seething and surging, and whose insights 
were endeavoring to crystallize into shape 
and symmetry. For lack of mastery over 
the means of expression, such as have become 
familiar to all cultured men, he was obliged 
to invent a technique of his own. His thoughts 
are so couched in symbols, that on this ac- 
count chiefly, as is probable, he is usually 
spoken of as a mystic. Xot referring here 
to another and profounder definition of this 
word, I may say that his constant use of 
symbolic expressions shows rather the poetic 
attitude, which too, in a different way, seeks 
to express and ilkistrate the underlying har- 
mony. But his thought is that of a philos- 
opher, who, Avithout acquaintance with former 
systems, or familiarity with solutions already 
given, and unused to customary modes of 
expression, found himself face to face with 
these great problems. Courageously he chased 
up all fact, all doctrine to its antecedent 



144 MENS CHRISTI. 

source or possibility, and would not leave 
anything neglected. In his mind there was 
no debris, left by former systems, to be cast 
out. Thus his mental movement was unso- 
phisticated and comparatively pure, and he 
dealt with his problems at first hand, and 
with the least conceivable mental bias. He 
had not the advantage, which sometimes 
becomes a disadvantage, of acquaintance with 
the previous tentatives of human thought, 
and in consequence of this made himself 
liable to criticism. But the naive utterances 
of one who had such marvelous insights, 
such honest mental requirement of truth, 
make him worthy of study. Some precious 
riches are to be brought away from this 
mine. What foregone bias there was came 
from his education in the Christian Church, 
whose doctrines he took for granted must be 
true, and he sought to reconcile them with 
the absolute truth, or rather to bring out 
their meaning as expressions of the same. 
But, indeed, no one reared in Christian 
countries can escape this bias. Nor can 
any one in countries not Christian escape 
a similar bias. The received religion has 



145 



entered into the mind before the life 
of thought begins. And even where no 
such objective influence exists, or exists 
in least possible degree, the mind itself, be- 
fore the philosophic impulse begins to stir, 
has ah'eady formed and acted upon its nat- 
ural religion. And this seeming disadvantage 
of a previous mental bias, in the search for 
truth may turn out to be an advantage. 
The bias is native born, and may be sophis- 
ticated by an imperfect religion, or corrected 
by one wliich is perfect and true. If true, 
it will coalesce more readily with the religion 
which is implicit in the structure of the 
human mind itself. 

Boehme did not rest till he had vindicated 
the truth of Christian doctrine to his satisfac- 
tion. 

It is no part of my purpose to treat of 
Boehme's philosophy in general, but only to 
notice that his thinking brought him face to 
face with a question which has troubled the 
philosophers and theologians all along, and 
which for himself he solved ; reaching the 
conclusion, that there is in and for the Eter- 
nal First Principle, a Nature. Not to mention 



146 MENS CHRISTI. 

that, in forms clear or obscure, this conception 
may be found in all the previous ages, and is 
notably present in the Christian Scriptures, — 
in Boehme's mind it was subjected to a pro- 
found speculative analysis. His thought has 
been availed of by subsequent writers, notably 
by Oetinger, by the Roman Catholic philoso- 
pher, Baader, by Schelling, Rothe and Marten- 
sen. The coincidence of these with Boehme 
is great, if not strict, except in the case of 
Schelling ; whose speculation allies itself read- 
ily with a semi-pantheistic form of doctrine, a 
kind of philosophic Sabellianism, which may 
have its own critique.* 

In this scheme creation is a metaphysical 
necessity in and for the Divine Being, is that 
whereby he reaches true personality, and other 
personality becomes possible. Hence a deter- 
mined universe is as eternal as the pure spirit- 
ground, — i. e., thought and energy. 

In the other scheme, which Boehme im- 
plies, though his utterances are sometimes 
ambiguous, and in which the other writers I 
have named agree, creation is a free activity. 
The First Principle is complete in itself, and 

*This may be found, in brief form, ih appendix A, of the first volume of 
my work, "Christian Doctrine Harmonized." 



147 

under no physical or metaphysical necessity to 
create. What may be predicated is a moral 
necessity, which however is only rightly 
thought as love, self-consistent, whose idea 
evaporates if freedom is denied. It presup- 
poses an ideal end, and the impulse to find 
reciprocation. Could all things be comprised 
in a physical or logical nexus, love and free- 
dom would have been impossible as truths, or 
even as ideas. Their presence in the human 
consciousness, if it could be, would be the 
delusion of delusions. They would be abso- 
lutely uncaused. But indeed they could not 
be found there. 

But the problem is, how, — this determined 
universe being given, this peopled space, these 
masses, with their laws and motions, the spir- 
itual characteristics of the human beings on 
this planet, human history and development, 
the glimpses of an end and aim, all facts and 
phases of consciousness whatever, — how to 
account for it as thus determined ; whether 
this can be done by assuming as its origin 
and motive power a merely or purely spirit- 
ual principle. The attempt so to do has met 
with objection enough, and just here it is that 



148 MENS CHRISTI. 

materialism possesses what strength it has. It 
contends that we cannot explain material ex- 
istence and movement from merely spiritual 
grounds. In this the materialists are as firm 
as their opponents are, who contend that spir- 
itual truths and results cannot be explained 
from mere physical antecedents. The one 
position seems as impregnable as the other. 
The failure of this last endeavor has become 
manifest, and is acknowledged ; while many 
advocates of the former contention, while 
right in their negation, have no positive 
affirmation to supply instead, except the old 
formula of creation out of nothing, which, 
when scrutinized, proves to have no meaning, 
and is simply a confession of mental impo- 
tence. Moreover the Christian Scriptures 
authorize the use of no such formula. On 
the contrary, their authors seem by their care- 
fulness in the use of words, expressly to guard 
against it. 

The need of reconciliation here was appar- 
rent to the unsophisticated mind of Boehme, 
and however unclear his expressions upon 
other doctrines, just here his virgin thought 
is found to have confirmation in that of some 



149 

who went before, and has commended itself 
to the eminent philosophic theologians whom 
I have named above. But this doctrine, while 
I acknowledge a valid ground for it, has not 
been expressed in a manner so satisfying to 
me, as to lift it above criticism. Its latest 
advocate and interpreter. Dr. Martensen, may 
be taken to have possessed whatever truth 
may have been precipitated by the thinking 
of his predecessors. 

Just here it is necessary at once to remove 
a misconception, and Martensen says rightly: 
" When Nature is affirmed in God it is in 
comparison with what we call nature, some- 
thing infinitely subtle and supermaterial, — is 
not matter at all, but rather a source for 
matter, a plenitude of living forces and ener- 
gies." This full sentence contains, in my view, 
both truth and error, — or, at least, is inade- 
quately expressed ; and, without treating of 
the matter exhaustively, I shall accomplish 
my immediate purpose, by criticising the 
latter and elaborating the former. 

The misconception to which he alludes is 
commonplace enough. The doctrine of a 
Nature in God is objected to as if it affirmed 



150 MENS CHRISTI. 

an eternal universe, a material entity outside 
of God, which thus denies the old formula, 
namely, a '' something out of nothing." This it 
does, indeed, but it does not affirm an eternal 
universe, for a universe means something 
determined, and of which predications may 
be made. The doctrine does not affirm this, 
but declares the possibility of this. It would 
trace back the known universe, so far as it has 
spiritual characteristics to its ground in the 
absolute spirit, but since the universe is also 
material, it would discover the ground or pos- 
sibility of this also. We owe to the deter- 
mined universe the notion or idea of the 
absolute spirit ; and we owe to it, likewise, 
the discovery of something that must be syn- 
thesized by spirit to become the known uni- 
verse. In this pure ground there must be the 
absence of all determinations, for if any exist, 
it is identified at once with the known uni- 
verse, and the universe appears as eternal. 
Thus then, we must abstract whatever is 
known of the universe, but we cannot abstract 
that which has received the determinations, 
which still remains for pure thought. The 
only thing that can be said about it is that it 



151 

is that which synthesized by spirit becomes 
the universe. We do not know the absolute 
ground of spirit, until it breaks into the dis- 
tinctions of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — 
i. e., is determined ; but we assume it, or are 
obliged to think it, nevertheless. But, as the 
known universe is in movement and change, 
and undergoes development, there must be 
in the pure ground the possibility of such 
movement. But all development occurs only 
when the pure ground is synthesized by spirit, 
for its movement always betrays the idea, and 
thus thought and energy are its spiritual pre- 
suppositions. 

Here, now, may come in my critique of 
Martensen. He says : '' This Nature is not 
matter, but rather a source for matter." So 
far right, but he adds : '' a plenitude of living 
forces and energies." Here now I find myself 
bewildered. ^' Forces." What are forces, but 
energy dealing with existing material, and 
causing movements for the realization of an 
idea. And why add '' energies," unless to 
amplify the notion of forces. These, ^'idea," 
^^ thought," '' abstract energy," belong to spirit 
and have their ground in that. Energy be- 



152 MENS CHRISTI. 

comes '' force," only by virtue of this very 
''Nature," which is hypothecated. ''Forces," 
can be understood and imagined. If there 
were anything in this " Nature " which could 
be understood and imagined, it would not be 
undetermined. We have not clearly posited 
it until, having removed all possibility for 
understanding and imagination, it still re- 
mains for pure thought and is a requirement 
of reason, for the moment spirit enters it, it 
becomes the object of knowledge. The prin- 
ciple of causality still prevails as the law of 
the reason and the fundamental category for 
thinking ; and the ground for the material 
required for the exhibition of force is just as 
necessary and imperious a requirement for 
thinking as the ground for the spiritual, 
seeing that all force makes thought real or 
manifests thought. The word " force," as an 
abstract term may then be conveniently dis- 
carded. " Forces " are the modes of the 
Divine Energy, in their movement and play, 
in their contests and equilibria, accomplishing 
concrete existence and change. 

This " Nature " in God means, then, the 
possibility of the material. From pure spirit 



"a nature in god." 153 

alone you can never deduce the material. In 
the attempt to do so you simply postulate 
energy and thought on the one side, and an 
intelligible result in the other, with no copula, 
no connection, no affirmation, nothing that 
the mind caii think, between them. 

What this felt, seen, perceived, conceived 
matter is or was in its simplest or primal form, 
science has not shown us, and will never 
show us. It can simply carry us back by its 
analysis to the point where we must part with 
all exercise of understanding and imagination, 
and there it leaves us. The pure thought- 
faculty, in its demand for co-ordination, steps 
in here and rescues the residuum, and that 
which is in itself barren, becomes fruitful 
when synthesized by spirit. The Christian 
Scriptures have a name for this residuum, and 
call it the '^ Divine Doxa." Thus the last 
result of scientific painstaking and of philo- 
sophic thought succeeding, has been antici- 
pated in the Christian Scriptures. 

The notion of the Divine Doxa has been 
degraded by making it something dependent 
upon human subjective estimation, or at least 
the foresight of this in the divine mind. 



154 MENS CHEISTI. 

That is, it is nothing real, but only some- 
thing that emerges when the real comes to 
be. If, in this regard it is something eternal, 
then transcendent existence and intelligence 
outside of God must be thought as eternal, 
and creation appears as a necessary thing ; 
in which case, if development be needful, 
we have the result of development without 
its pre-conditions. We have either a stagnant 
plenum already reached, or a cyclical move- 
ment. The very notion of a free creation 
implies an ideal end in the divine mind, 
and therefore a beginning. 

The Christian Scriptures do not speak of 
the Divine Doxa in terms implying spiritual 
categories. It is not anything needful for 
the definition of pure spirit, but, indeed, 
something to make the activity of the con- 
crete spirit beyond itself possible. It is 
spoken of rather by physical symbols or 
analogies. Nay, it almost undergoes identi- 
fication with the pure light, and as that in 
which no darkness or contrast exists. Thus, 
it has as yet no interior contrast, but is 
itself a contrast to the pure spirit.* 

* " But, not less wonderful are certain luminous spots or patches, which 
discover themselves only by the Telescope, and appear to the na:ked eye like 



" A NATUKE IN GOD." 155 

Boehme had this insight, that something 
must be posited in the First Principle which 
can make possible a determined universe, 
and this shaped itself to him in the form 
of a contrast; and he afhrms that the ever-exist- 

small fixed stars, but in reality are nothing else but the Light coming from 
an extraordinary great space in the ether ; through which a lucid medium is 
diffused, that shines with its own proper Luster. This seems fully to recon- 
cile that Difficulty which some have moved against the Description Moses 
gives of the creation, alleging that Light could not be created without 
the Sun. But in the following instances the contrary is manifest ; for some 
of these bright spots discover no sign of a star in the middle of them ; and 
the irregular form of those that have shOAVs them not to proceed from the 
Illumination of a Central Body, since they have no annual parallax. They 
cannot fail to occupy spaces immensely great, and perhaps not less than our 
whole Solar System. In all these so vast spaces it should seem that there is a 
perpetual uninterrupted Day, which may furnish matter for speculation as 
well to the curious Naturalist, as to the Astronomer."— Edmund Halley. 
Philosophical Transactions. Vol. 29, p. 392. 

Mr. Lockyer, in quoting the above, remarks that Maupertius as well as 
Halley laid great stress upon the possible luminosity of sparse masses of mat- 
ter in space. 

Aproj. OS to this, I have read somewhere an account of certain experi- 
ments which went to show, that matter, when extremely attenuated, became 
self-luminous ; but I have not seen since any repetition, or authentication of 
the same. 

All this falls in with my a priori suggestion just made, that Light was the 
first determination of the Divine Doxa, hence the primal form of its manifest 
ation, in which were the tokens of created existence. Thus this word, "light" 
has both subjective and objective significance. Also that the next subse- 
quent determination was the diremption of this light into the clear and 
the obscure, in which is contrast and relation, and the possibility of all 
future relations. Science has found the cosmic dust, and may have found 
the contrasted light. But by what process the latter becomes the former, it 
does not and cannot tell us. Only when synthesized by spirit, determined by 
thought and pure energy, does it come within the domain of knowledge. We 
may speculate here, and ask whether the obscure does not come from the re- 
tardation or limitation of motion rather than by its acceleration. From 
Avhich it would seem to follow that the Divine Doxa itself was not rest, but 
infinite motion. Here, again, we have in the physical realm the dialectic, 
which appears as the law of creative activity, as well as of the thought- 
movement. 

Thoughts like these, or visions of all this, seem to have been in the minds 
of the Scripture writers, as they are dimly and incoherently in ours. We ac- 
knowledge the inadequacy of language to express them, and they seem to 
have felt the same difficulty. 



156 MENS CHRISTI. 

ing contrast in the known universe, between 
the spiritual and the material, obtains in the 
Primum itself. But Boehme falls into an 
error, or at least renders himself liable to a 
misconception, by confusing the notion of 
contrast with that of contradiction, and thus 
his expression sometimes seems to lay a 
basis for the existence of evil as necessary. 
On this account he has been accused of 
Manicheeism. This vibration between the true 
and false view of contrast confuses him, and 
makes the expression of his thought unclear. 
Martensen vindicates him, and probably justly, 
from the charge of consciously holding the 
necessity of evil, with which indeed other 
parts of his works are inconsistent. 

Contradiction- is that which is repugnant 
to the essence of a thing, while contrast is 
a necessary difference which emerges from 
that idea or essence itself. Thus beneficence 
and severity in the Ruler of mankind are 
contrasts, yet they are both forms of the 
same thing, the divine love taking one shape 
or another, according as the recipient is 
loving or unloving. But moral good and 
evil are contradictory, for if the latter be 



"a nature in god." 157 

thought as necessary, the conception of it 
as violation of the absolute law obtaining 
in the structure of the universe is lost. 
In the history of human thinking the temp- 
tation has been very great to regard evil 
as part of a necessary process, in which 
evil is the dialectic, and thus that it and 
good are mere contrasts. The willingness to 
abide in such a solution betrays a weakness 
in many philosophers, and shows that the 
gasping endeavor after a unity, in sheer 
weariness, has allowed itself to be content 
with a premature and too easy a solution. 
It is humiliating, indeed, to find that there 
is one dark abyss, which the human mind 
has not, as yet, light enough to illumine, 
and moral evil is that abyss. Its possibility, 
its ideal attractiveness, may be admitted as 
a requirement for spiritual development, 
but its actuality can by no means be ad- 
mitted as necessary. The whole edifice of spir- 
itual thought, thereby undergoes a bouleverse- 
ment. We hold then that in the First Prin- 
ciple there is contrast, but no contradiction, 
and that this contrast is furnished by the 
Divine Doxa. 



158 MENS CHKISTI. 

This doctrine of a '^ Nature in God " does 
not appear in Boehme or Martensen in pre- 
cisely the form in which I have presented it.* 
They both acknowledge that, quite independ- 
ent of the created world, there is an internal 
and external phenomenal manifestation in 
God himself, — but in using this word '' phe- 
nomenal " there is carried into the notion of 
the Divine Doxa, determinations, derived from 
human experience and analogies, and an ap- 
peal is made to imagination. This wonderful 
faculty of the human mind leaps into activity 
at the slightest hint, but as it has no ma- 
terial to deal with here, any results it may 
reach and enjoy are not trustworthy for 
pure thought. Also Martensen throws out 
the conjecture whether angelic existence does 
not belong to this sphere, before the deter- 
minations which constitute the known uni- 
verse came to be, and that angels communi- 
cate with each other, and have communion 

* I may be allowed to say that my own thought upon these questions has 
been entirely independent, and that the conclusions I have reached were 
before I had read anything of Jacob Boehme, or Martensen's critique of his 
scheme. Those who are familiar with these latter will perceive that there 
are points of agreement, and also points of entire disagreement. I cannot 
in this lecture explicate these points, but must confine myself to the isolated 
topic which is its title, and this, too, cannot be treated in an exhaustive 
manner. It receives fuller treatment in the text, and in one of the append- 
ices of the first volume of my work "Christian Doctrine Harmonized." 



159 

with God through organs or media, which 
imply determinations of the Divine Doxa. 
This cannot be denied as possible, but it 
cannot be made a matter of knowledge. 
There is the same difficulty and obscurity 
a,bout it that there is about the inquiry 
how departed human souls communicate with 
each other. 

The Divine Doxa is spoken of in the Chris- 
tian Scriptures as something in which they de- 
light, and if so, it cannot be for Father, Son and 
Holy Spirit, anything barren. But it passeth 
knowledge. Wonderful as it is, it is to be 
shared by the perfected creature, — but he, to 
share it must pass through a prior obscuration. 
We are in this obscuration, and if angels now, 
or ever, shared the pure glory, they must have 
passed through an obscuration. And the 
inquiry emerges Avhether the whole question 
of angelic existence would not have fewer 
difficulties, if their creation is regarded as 
subsequent and not anterior to the determi- 
nations which constitute our universe. There 
are difficulties in the way of thinking that 
they could have shared ah initio the pure 
glory. That which God did not ever bestow 



160 MENS CHRISTI. 

is self -existence. Since he eternally bestows 
self-existence, that which he bestows is also 
God, and thus we have the generation of the 
Son from the Father. Now, in our thought, 
the Godhead becomes fructifying, and love is 
an eternal act, whereby is the Holy Spirit. But 
that which is not eternally self-existent, must 
have a beginning. The highest exhibition or 
act of love, when it transcends the self-existent, 
is the bringing into being that which can re- 
ciprocate it. To be made perfect by the divine 
fiat is a lower effort of divine love, than if 
the created spirit is to create himself as to his 
moral form. Therefore he must undergo 
development in the sphere that is set him, 
and arise out of the nature ground. For him 
the Divine Glory must be obscured that he by 
his own effort may become fit for the removal 
. of the obscuration. And angels cannot be free 
from this need. Otherwise they are a far 
lower order of created spirits than man him- 
self, and moral evil could never be predicated 
as possible or actual for them. 

Thus the determinations of the Divine Glory 
appear as a ^process. How wonderfully this 
unfolds itself to our vision ! Here science fur- 



^^A NATURE IN GOD." 161 

nishes constantly new food for our imagination 
and delight. How poor would our existence 
be were it only spiritual ! The reality of the 
Divine love is shown by the existence and the 
movement of the material. This constitutes 
God's organ of communication with all pos- 
sible spirits, and is the means for the enrich- 
ment of their being. In this wealthy field 
the soul, as imagination, may play unchecked, 
and how wonderful are the results it achieves ! 
Man's victories over it and comprehension of 
it have been incessant, and the desire for 
further knowledge and power grows more 
intense, and has an ever-deepening hope or 
conviction that it will be forever gratified. 
And if God is infinite in resource, is transcen- 
dent as well as immanent, his thoughts can 
never be exhausted, and illimitable time will 
bring no weariness nor cessation of growth and 
activity. 

When thought as pure spirit, as trans- 
cendent only, and aloof from his glory, and 
its possibilities, the Divine Being appears as 
cold, self-sufficient, unapproachable. The uni- 
verse shows that he can be approached, and 
be an object for the heart, as well as for the 



162 MENS CHEISTI. 

mind. How the infinite space is, through 
astronomic efforts, becoming filled with won- 
ders ! What a harvest is here for human 
intelligence, what possibilities of delight ! 
And all this too, must enter into the divine 
delight. And now, if we ask, if the divine 
delight existed anterior to these determinations 
which make the universe known to us as 
possible to furnish delight, — if Jesus could 
say: 'Glorify thou me with the glory which 
I had with thee before the world was," let us 
remember that while about the Divine Doxa, 
before the determinations which make it an 
object for our knowledge, we can make no 
positive affirmations, we are authorized to 
make no negative ones. We are not obliged to 
think the divine love, under time conditions, 
as inactive, and that the Divine Being can 
be affirmed as not forever transcending himself 
for thereby the very notion of the divine 
love is put to risk. But at the same time no 
one can affirm that God transcended himself 
in any form that can come within the scope 
of our present knowledge. And this mys- 
terious reserve of possibilities is only an af- 
firmation of the divine infinity. 



"a nature in god." 163 

It is an axiom that no concrete existence 
is simple ; for, if you affirm any thing what- 
ever of it, you imply relations to something- 
else. Thus the Godhead, to be a sufficient 
first principle, can not be thought as a simple. 
Hence the absolute need for our thought that 
we should discover the immanent relations 
which constitute the definition of pure spirit. 
Herein too is displayed on one side the possi- 
bility of its transcending itself, and if the 
possibility, then the actuality. Here occurs 
the Doxa as furnishing the possibility of this 
on the other side, and thus it is assumed as eter- 
nal, or out of time, but not in any determined 
form in time. To find in the Doxa itself eter- 
nal immanent relations would seem to promise 
to render easier the explanation of the actual 
universe. And hence Boehme thought that 
he had discovered in it such relations as 
could make possible the form of the actual 
determination. The success of this and the 
need of this we have questioned, declaring 
that the synthesizing of the pure glory by spirit 
is all that is required. But this does not deny 
the possibility of determinations before our 
known determinations. The Christian Scrip- 



164 MENS CHRISTI. 

tures afford us no help for our thought here, 
yet they do speak of the Divine Doxa in such 
terms, as to startle the human mind and 
awaken its hope and aspirations. Human 
longings are as much physical as spiritual. In 
this is the explanation of the emotion of the 
beautiful, and if this have an objective ground, 
then beauty is .^eternal, and God shares to 
the full the delight we have in it, and it is 
for us the most captivating and entrancing 
characteristic of all his works. The flowers 
that bloom in the recesses of the wilderness, 
the bright colors in the ocean depths, the 
whirling spirals of the nebulae, all form, color, 
motion is accompanied by the divine delight, 
and such as even we can reproduce in our- 
selves. Thus no one can aflirm that a per- 
petual outpouring of the beautiful has not 
existed from all eternity, or that there is any 
limit to its possible variety or change. 

The coincidence of the intimations of the 
Christian Scriptures with the finest results of 
human thinking in all its branches (aesthetics 
here included as illustration), is for us an 
evidence that there is a divine element in 
them, anticipating the last human mental 



" A NATURE IN GOD." 165 

achievements, and keeps alive the belief that 
they are more profound than all science and 
do really contain the ultimate philosophy. 
If so, they cannot have been, as yet, exhausted 
as to their meaning ; and the progress of 
human knowledge in other pathways must 
continually bring out new meanings and 
correct all foregone misapprehensions. It does 
not follow that they need to be always co- 
incident with our empirical knowledge, seeing 
that this is in perpetual flux ; but that the 
essential thought, the developing idea which 
underlies all phenomenal changes, has been 
intuited more clearly by their authors than by 
the rest of us. The deepest thought must 
elude the possibilities of language, which has 
grown up from mere superficial knowledge, 
and hence can only express itself by symbols. 
And here one can recall the numerous expres- 
sions in the Scriptures concerning the divine 
glory, as though it were something that could 
be made apparent to human vision. Moses' 
burning bush, the transfigured garments on 
the mount, St. Stephen's shining face, the 
vague images of the Apocalypse — all these 
show the profound conviction in the minds 



166 MENS CHRISTI. 

of those who recorded these things of the 
presence of something wonderful that could 
only be expressed by symbol. 

Holding this notion of the Divine Doxa in 
our thought, gives fixedness and perpetuity 
to the existing universe. It is not to ^' pass 
away as a dream when one awaketh.'' Ac- 
cording to the old formula that which sprang 
out of the absolute nothing may return to the 
absolute nothing. There is no contradiction 
involved. But if the ground of the material 
universe is itself eternal, and the divine glory 
is needful for the divine delight (which is 
something more than self-contemplation, or 
imaginative reproduction of the infinite 
resources of the Logos), if the divine thoughts 
are acts, and their spring is love, and their 
final cause reciprocal love, extending forever 
in space and time, then we have warrant to 
think the perpetuity of the material universe, 
and that we have not prized it and cannot 
prize it too highly. Out of its capacities are 
to come our own growth and enrichment in 
knowledge, and a sphere for our own activity. 
God is richer and fuller for our conception. 
The doctrine of resurrection, or physical glori- 



'' A NATURE IN GOD. 167 

fication, receives new confirmation. They who 
deny it have not valued enough the material 
universe, and give us but an impoverished 
field upon which to indulge our imagination. 
Philosophy may value chiefly the thought 
which the analysis of the material universe 
reveals, but the emotion accompanying this 
is too cold. The poetic attitude is warmer, 
regards the symbols of thought as living 
things, and thus its scope is wider and so truer 
than that of philosophy itself. Thus the alle- 
gation that poets hold truth and fact in the 
most consistent synthesis, and thus that they 
are the nearest to the secret of the universe, 
receives even speculative confirmation. 



LECTURE VI 

THE IMPOTENCE AND THE RIGHT USE OF IM- 
AGINATION IN DEALING WITH CHRISTIAN 
DOCTRINE. 

In the lecture which follows I endeavor to 
point out the source of many of the untenable 
or incoherent views of Christian doctrine 
which have been hindrances in the way of 
advance in theologic science. 

I give only a specimen, for to treat the 
topic exhaustively would require the com- 
position of a treatise, which I may at some 
day undertake. There would thus be furnished 
another evidence that the solution of all 
problems, whether of physical science, psy- 
chology, or theology, depends upon the phi- 
losophy or ideal construction of the whole 
fabric of knowledge, which is implicit in the 
mind of one who attempts it. He who 
endeavors to build up his system upon 
exegetical or historic grounds solely is quite 
as much dominated by his philosophy as he 
who pursues any other method. 

168 



IMPOTENCE OE IMAGINATION. 169 

Imagination is commonly spoken or written 
of as the representative faculty — that which 
takes up the impressions derived through the 
senses, and which have become perceptions 
by falling into the moulds supplied by the 
understanding, and reproduces them in con- 
sciousness as accurately as possible, or recom- 
bines them into a new result having apparent 
unity, so as to present them thus to the mind 
for its work or its play. 

The linking together the material supplied 
by memory, in a loose or arbitrary way, is 
sometimes called Fancy ; while the unifying 
of this content so as to produce a self- 
consistent whole has been spoken of as the 
work of imagination proper, thus distin- 
guished. Both mental movements are partly 
spontaneous and partly deliberate. The 
passivity is only seeming. The activity is 
actual even in the most apparent spontaneity, 
and may consist in its lowest degree merely 
in the will's refraining from any interference 
with the play of association, and holding the 
mind steady during this riot of images. But 
a more manifestly willful procedure is when 
the mind yields to the attraction to pass be- 



170 MENS CHEISTI. 

yond itself, to infuse itself into the image, and 
reproduce itself in its life ; when it becomes, as 
it were, for the time being that which it con- 
templates. This activity is always accom- 
panied by emotion, a kind of melting of the 
individual life into the universal life, or that 
of some of its concretions. Thus imagination 
comes to be called the creative faculty. 

Manifestly in all these procedures the 
mind deals only with the concrete, with ideas 
or thoughts which have been made real and 
sensible. When by pure thinking the abstract 
idea has been disengaged, it becomes matter 
for thought solely ; and imagination is robbed 
of its material. It can do nothing with the 
naked ideas except by clothing them again 
with the body which has been abstracted. 
But so habitual and constant in every human 
being has become its exercise, that it vainly 
or revengefully still continues to intrude into 
the region of the pure ideas, annuls the ab- 
straction, blinds itself to the fact that it has 
done so, engaging the mind, meanwhile, to 
draw inferences only valid if the abstraction 
has not been made, and thus beclouds or 
distorts the ideas themselves. All which has 



i 



IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 171 

been the source of constant mistake or con- 
fusion in man}^ mental endeavors, as well as 
in the meditation upon distinctively religious 
truth. Thus imagination is a faculty which, 
more than any other, needs restraining and 
regulating, and to have its proper function 
clearly defined. 

It would be interesting, in this connection, 
to make a comparison, so far as it can be 
made, between this faculty in the brute (which 
manifestly possesses and uses it) and in the 
human being ; between its exercise when deal- 
ing wdth material undetermined by spirit- 
relations, and wuth that so determined. But 
this would be an independent and a large 
topic. 

The faculty of imagination is a universal 
human possession, yet exists in individuals in 
different degrees of activity. Probably its 
degrees are ruled by physical or physiological 
conditions rather than by spiritual ones. On 
account of these it varies in quickness and 
vividness, and in the extent of its range ; yet 
in every one it is in constant activity, mediates 
the whole passage from abstract consciousness 
to any act of will, presents the immediate or 



172 MENS CHRISTI. 

remote result which gives end and impetus to 
action. It sometimes carries the mind out of 
itself so completely as to reduce the pure 
thought power almost to passivity, to make the 
man the victim of some image or ideal presen- 
tation which alone he sees, to the exclusion 
of everything else. This fact must affect his 
actual responsibility, and teaches us that to 
judge of the absolute moral worth of a man 
or his actions is no superficial problem, but 
one requiring no less than the divine insight. 

The errors, delusions, superstitions, impure 
or incoherent philosophies which have been so 
rife in human history, all probably owe their 
origin largely to the misuse of imagination. 

To exhibit some of the unfortunate results 
of its dealing with theological doctrines, or 
problems related thereto, to show thus its 
impotence, and then to point out and limit 
its true function in dealing with such matter, 
is my present design. 

All the object-matter with which imagi- 
nation may successfully deal is contained in 
space. These bounded spaces, made real by 
the senses of sight and touch, are its proper 
material. But imagination tries to compass 



IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 173 

the absolute space itself, to try its wing in the 
illimitable. It projects the self-consciousness 
into the infinite abyss, passes beyond the 
planets and stars and systems, to which it must 
give relative location, passes beyond them 
to find itself in pure vacancy, with an inter- 
minable distance before it, rendered no less 
by any speed or any duration of time. It 
must abandon the endeavor, and confess its 
impotence, in dealing with absolute space. 
Instead of concluding, then, that pure space 
is not for imagination, but for pure thought 
only, the mind, as represented by this faculty, 
still abides in its delusion, and supplies further 
objects on which it may rest, and after the 
exhaustion of its known objects supplies an 
attenuated ether, or locates a far-distant 
heaven or paradise or hell ; all which in- 
ventions may become delusions, not neces- 
sarily mischievous, but certainly troubling 
and misleading the thinking faculty in its 
search after the truth. 

This, the mind's impotence to compass the 
infinite space, has been noted and so dealt 
with by Sir William Hamilton and by Dean 
Mansel, as to lead them to deny or misinter- 



174 MENS CHRISTI. 

pret the mind's idea of the infinite, making it 
but a negation of the finite, and the result of 
the limitation of the human intellect, they not 
perceiving that the finite and infinite are 
correlatives ; that one implies the other ; that 
one is as positive as the other ; that they are 
pure thoughts only, though necessary ones, 
and apprehended by a mental movement in 
which imagination takes no part. 

Yet this endeavor to compass the infinite 
need not be repressed, and has its own high 
reward. It brings about the emotion of the 
sublime. Though ending in failure, the mind 
has been expanded, has attempted a larger life 
than its customary one, and thus is hinted 
that we are intended and fitted for a larger 
life, that our career is to be an endless growth, 
a projection toward an ever-receding circum- 
ference — a life that will grow richer and richer 
forever and forever as it meets and appropri- 
ates the ever-during outgushings from the 
supernal and inexhaustible fountain. 

Imagination may and does rightly deal 
much with human beings as concretes, with 
human souls as related to and determined by 
the physical organization and environment. 



IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 175 

But it has not restrained itself from attempt- 
ing to deal with the spiritual "psyche, with the 
human soul aloof from its bodily organ- 
ization. It follo^vs it beyond the article of 
death, and fills that whole region with delu- 
sions. 

For our present knowledge, death is the 
severance of the existing bond connecting the 
human being with the physical universe, as 
IV e know it. Though by pure thinking we 
may find ourselves obliged to acknowledge 
that we cannot regard the spiritual soul after 
death as entirely out of relation to the physical 
universe, as without an environment, without 
organs or media of communication ; yet this 
relation is an abstract one for thought, and 
cannot be described in the terms of our present 
knowledge. Hence imagination is without its 
proper material, and if it attempts to disport 
itself here, it can only do so by covertly im- 
porting back the body and its physical re- 
lations, which, according to our present 
knowledge, have been abandoned, or changed 
into something which defies conjecture. With 
what material imagination may deal legiti- 
mately here needs to be carefully defined ; and 



176 MENS CHRISTI. 

we shall see, later on, that it is not entirely 
without function. 

In these, its vagaries, it dilutes the material 
which it brings back to suit its purpose. It 
deals with matter still, but with matter attenu- 
ated more and deprived of some of its proper- 
ties. Thus we have stories of ghosts, of spirit- 
ual souls, which can be seen and heard, and 
are either without gravity, or which might be 
touched were our senses fine enough. Thus 
the human soul is still figured as a material 
entity, located or moving in the absolute space. 
The world of our knowledge and the body of 
our mundane consciousness are thus resup- 
plied, and the mind's endeavor to make the 
proper abstractions and draw the proper in- 
ferences is clogged and troubled. We need 
hardly here refer to the delusions and super- 
stitions which have arisen from this source. 

Thus, too, we have Heaven and Paradise 
and Gehenna, figured as having locality in 
space, fixed or relatively moving ; and all the 
characteristics of our home planet carried into 
them ; all which need not be necessarily harm- 
ful, and may have, when regulated, some prac- 
tical use, but which again troubles our pure 



IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 177 

thinking, and beclouds the clearness of our 
doctrines. This has been a perpetual mass of 
debris for theology to clear away in its en- 
deavored advance. 

Modern science has been very helpful to 
theology in removing these delusions. It has 
taught us that the whole material universe is 
in flux and movement ; that no '' thing "is at 
any moment what it was the moment before ; 
that the universe has been, is, and is to be an 
evolution, moving steadily on to an end, which 
it is our endeavor to forecast and interpret ; 
that the human body is no fixed aggregation 
of material particles ; that its identity is not 
material, but ideal, a synthesis of the fixed and 
the changeable. In this way, through our 
advancing knowledge of ourselves and the 
world we live in, have many false notions held 
in the human mind, and in the Christian mind 
as well, been dissipated. The doctrine of the 
resurrection, or physical glorification, has been 
thus thought out more profoundly and satis- 
factorily, and all knowledge moved many steps 
toward harmonization. 

All this corrected knowledge has weakened 
greatl}^ the propensity to intolerance w^hich 



178 MENS CHEISTI. 

besets the natural man, and out of which 
Christianity is intended progressively to lead 
him. We have less than once of superstition, 
of idolatry, of bigotry and cruelty ; though, 
alas ! the tension of the elastic cord by which 
Christianity draws man away from these, and 
which is not yet severed, is relaxed, and he 
subsides back into them too often. 

In another respect likewise imagination has 
proven to be a dead-weight to thought, and has 
caused the mind to sink back into the obscure 
w^hen it was about to mount into the light ; 
has caused it to deny or be blind, when it was 
about to welcome the truth. And here, now, 
I must ask thoughtful attention, for the argu- 
ment is very subtle. 

Science endeavors, by abstraction, to analyze 
the material universe. It thinks away vitality 
and chemistry, and tries unsuccessfully to 
think away mechanical laws, and finding that 
it cannot do that, simplifies them. In all this 
process imagination has been active and useful. 
It brings us at length from the manifestly 
heterogeneous to the apparently homogeneous. 
It gives us the nebular hypothesis, figures an 
immense aggregation of similar particles, ex- 



IMPOTEXCE OF IMAGIXATIOX. 179 

tremely attenuated, removed from all possi- 
bility of relation to our present senses, and 
these in motion — motion according to an idea, 
however, and whose result is our present 
universe. If thought abstracts motion from 
this mass, it is left dead and alien, and these 
particles are out of all relation, except relative 
location in space. To make it living and 
productive motion must be resupplied from 
the spirit realm, which furnishes the pure 
energy, the idea, and the final cause. As long, 
however, as size, shape, and relative location 
are left to the particles of this attenuated 
matter, imagination may still deal with these, 
though not fruitfully. Philosophic thinking 
must either assume this stadium as permanent 
or eternal, or must account for it. To assume it 
as permanent or eternal gives us the Platonic 
Duality, which so lowers our conception of the 
divine that the mind refuses to rest in it. 
Besides, absolute rest is a pure hypothesis, with 
no philosophic need for it, and no a posteriori 
evidence to support it or even for more than a 
moment suggest it. Thus philosophy takes up 
the problem w^here science leaves it, and en- 
deavors to account for the existence of matter, 



180 MENS CHRISTI. 

reduced by science to its simplest form. But 
it is evident that at this stage of the mental 
procedure imagination is left without a foot- 
hold. If size, shape, and relative locality are 
abstracted, it has no longer any material with 
which to deal. The philosophic procedure 
noAV retires to the contemplation of spirit. It 
finds there only the immanent relations of 
the Godhead, required to think personality, 
thought and love. What has been called the 
actus purus is only a timeless relation. Activ- 
ity, in the sense of energy producing change, 
is a time conception, and carries us at once 
beyond the compass of pure spirit. There 
must be a somewhat upon which it is exer- 
cised. Ex-hypothese it is not something alien, 
limiting the divine activity ; therefore it must 
be somewhat eternal and essential to the con- 
stitution of the first principle itself 

If the attempt is made to think activity 
within the circle of pure spirit, it evaporates 
into the conception of relation solely, and 
out of this no universe can ever come. 
That there is a somewhat belonging to the 
eternal constitution of the Godhead which 
cannot be spoken of in the terms of pure 



IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 181 

spirit the Scriptures everywhere assert or 
imply ; and they call it the Divine Doxa, 
speak of it as shared by Father, Son, and 
Spirit before all creation. Hence creation 
itself is but the determination of this by 
the divine thought and energy. Thus 
science, philosophy, and revelation, all lead 
us by their several pathways to this, and 
in this way find their desired reconcilia- 
tion. 

But now occurs the obscuration and con- 
fusion wrought by imagination. The mind, 
instead of resting content with the recogni- 
tion of this to which it has been led by 
pure thinking, yields to the impulse of 
imagination, and attempts to deal with this 
abstract divine glory, which it can only do by 
bringing back the very relations which have 
been abstracted, and dealing with it as if 
determined. Thus the very duality which 
thought had avoided is brought back by 
imagination. 

When thus presented, revelation and 
philosophy present their objections to this 
duality, and rightly ; yet the ordinary mind, 
and even the theological mind, still fet- 



182 MENS CHRISTI. 

tered by the imaginative delusion, comes to 
deny or fail to apprehend the divine glory 
as anything objective, and degrades it into 
a mere subjective something, to which no 
meaning whatever can be attached except 
by presupposing the possible regard of 
created intelligence ; and thus it is lost to 
the mind as anything eternal or divine. 
It is commonly regarded as the divine 
wealth of ideas merely, for which we have 
another word, the divine Logos, or the 
divine complacency or love, not seeing that 
this can undergo no suspension or diminu- 
tion. 

Yet the Scriptures interpose many safe- 
guards against this tendency. They nowhere 
identify the divine glory with pure being, 
or thought, or love. They make it the 
property of neither Father, Son, nor Holy 
Spirit, except through mutual possession. 
They speak of it as something shared by 
them, as something by virtue of which the 
universe may become and has become, and 
which the universe declares and shows forth. 
They connect it rather with the material 
than the spiritual ; never speak of it in the 



IMPOTEXCE OF IMAGIXATIOX. 183 

terms of spirit, but rather as that from 
which the material in its first form came. 
Its first determination, according to these 
writings, was the creation of Light, which 
to be known as light by those yet to be, 
and for whom was the creative fiat, must 
be contrasted with the obscure. God only 
lives in the pure glory. All created intel- 
ligence must live in the determined light, 
and from this contrast of the clear and the 
obscure all the boundless richness and the 
varied beauty of the universe have become. 

Thus the interference of imagination has 
so presented this doctrine to the mind as 
to make it objectionable, and has led to 
the denial or the oblivion of an essential 
truth. It has brought about this prolonged 
discord between revelation, philosophy, and 
science, and hindered the work of unifica- 
tion. That which ought to be, and is, a 
mere negative attitude of the mind halting, 
as imagination, before that to which it has 
been led by abstraction, yet, as the pure 
thought power, availing itself of it to unify 
its content, is contorted into a positive atti- 
tude asserting something, which, if any pre- 



184 MENS CHRISTI. 

dications whatever are made concerning it, 
must be regarded as 'still material. Thus 
to the naked idea which thought requires 
as essential to unification, Imagination has 
given body and content ; has thus hung a 
weight upon thought, and confused and 
postponed the attempted clarification of 
Christian doctrine. 

As the positive result of what has been 
said thus far it follows that '' creation " and 
'' evolution " are the same thing, and that 
the former is only rightly thought as the 
latter. But this doctrine of the divine im- 
manence is rescued from the charge of pan- 
theism only by holding at the same time 
the divine transcendence, i. e. that the uni- 
verse as we know it, or may ever know it, 
does not exhaust the sum of the divine 
capacities. Rather, the conception of the 
Godhead which we have reached, as essential 
love, by which only it is an adequate First 
Principle, implies an eternal activity, and a 
persistent transcendence. And God is imma- 
nent in every such out-going. But the re- 
sults of the divine activity exclusive of the 
result which has come, and is coming within 



IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 185 

our knowledge, are closed for our present 
thought. The universe of our possible knowl- 
edge does not meet the requirements of our 
aspiration. 

Also, in dealing with the Godhead in its im- 
manent relations, with it as pure spirit, 
imagination has led into incoherent views, 
not necessarily harmful, but also into errors 
which are mischievous and have caused 
many of the strifes and divisions of Chris- 
tendom. 

The declarations of the Christian Scrip- 
tures authorize the ascription of personality 
to what is called the Father, as well as to 
that which is called the Son, and to the Holy 
Spirit ; and also the ascription to each of 
these of essential divinity. To reconcile 
these statements is a problem for pure 
thinking, in which the Christian mind re- 
gards itself as having succeeded. But im- 
agination here likewise interferes, and as- 
cribes to each of these the characteristics of 
human personality. It figures three several 
consciousnesses (if this word can be rightly 
pluralized), each in itself independent, and 
neither necessary to the thought of the 



186 MENS CHRISTI. 

other ; hence three wills, or possible activi- 
ties, only arbitrarily in accord, or in accord 
from the moral necessity of love. Thus we 
have a virtual Tritheism, with its attendant 
difficulties. The doubting mind relucts 
from this, and divisions in Christendom 
have arisen in consequence. The expressed 
mind of the Church in its conciliar decisions 
has guarded against this, but the propensity 
still persists. No doubt the common Chris- 
tian mind, ever victimized by imagination, 
thinks the Christian doctrine of the Trin- 
ity in this tritheistic way, which may not 
necessarily be harmful to its devotional or 
practical life, but also may and has been. 
No doubt this has helped along the propen- 
sity to multiply the objects of worship, and 
has encouraged the cultus of the Blessed 
Virgin and other saints. It is then need- 
ful that theology should so rule the public 
Christian instruction as to obviate this pro- 
pensity, and render needless the assaults of 
unbelief or misbelief. 

The Christian Scriptures have guarded 
against this propensity likewise, — give no en- 
couragement to it. They furnish material 



IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 187 

for imagination in thinking the last mani- 
festation of the divine in the incarnate Son ; 
stimulate it in setting forth so clearly and 
minutely and amply Jesus Christ . and his 
career. Here imagination cannot be too 
busy or do too much. But they furnish 
no suggestion, help, or stimulus to imagina- 
tion in dealing with the Father or the Holy 
Spirit. These only manifest themselves to 
human apprehension in symbols, in the 
voice, or the tongues of flame, or other- 
wise ; in symbols variable, and which give no 
hint whatever of the essential being of what 
they symbolize, and are only media of commu- 
nication. 

Again, at the time of the celebration of 
the Lord's Supper, imagination is very apt 
to busy itself in a manner not indicated by 
the requirements and significance of this 
ordinance. As when it creates a mental 
image of Jesus' concrete divine-human person, 
and connects it with the transaction then 
ensuing. This here has no special signifi- 
cance, and is no whit difierent from Avhat 
may be done at any other time. It is a 
mere arbitrary juxtaposition, is not required 



188 MENS CHRISTI. 

at the time, and rather diverts the mind 
from its proper work. Also, when certain 
views of this sacrament are held, imagina- 
tion endeavors to present some indetermi- 
nate, vague, and shadowy image of our 
Lord's flesh and blood beneath the shews 
of the bread and the wine, — to imagine 
a miracle, in short — in which attempt fail- 
ure is inevitable, and the effort has been 
wasted. This impotent effort, which is ab- 
solutely without result, has even been 
called an act of faith, and this significant 
word, with its profound ethical and relig- 
ious implications, has thus been applied 
to a mere mental eflbrt, which, even if it could 
be successful, could have no reaction upon the 
character. 

As a final illustration, we may note that 
in dealing with the problems of Escha- 
tology the vagaries of imagination have been 
markedly mischievous. In dealing with the 
condition of souls after death, and drawing 
inferences, the mind, in the imaginative 
eflbrt, overpasses the bound where pure 
thought has left the doctrine of the Inter- 
mediate State, and carries into it still the 



IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 189 

universe as determined according to our 
present knowledge. It carries the material 
elements, with all their properties (however 
refined, still material), it carries the human 
body, with its possible enjoyments and 
sufferings, into this abstract realm, and 
gives us purgatorial fires, or some other 
forms of physical pain or enjoyment. Even 
in dealing with the resurrected bodies, 
whether glorified or not, it still regards 
them as fixed aggregations of matter, and 
gives them spatial or dynamic determina- 
tions similar to our present ones. All which 
may not be necessarily harmful in the prac- 
tical life, but which is certainly misleading 
in the endeavor to express the truth. In 
dealing with the fate of evil souls it has 
run riot, and the symbolic language of Holy 
Scripture, of fire, and brimstone, and the un- 
dying worm, has been taken literally. Thus 
the language intended to inspire moral dread 
of sin has been made to produce merely 
physical shrinking from apprehended pain. 
Imagination has also given occupations to 
Satan for which there is no scriptural war- 
rant, and thus has been thrown into disre- 



190 - MENS CHRISTI. 

pute and met with denial the profound yet 
difficult doctrine of spiritual evil. Indeed, 
for imagination the future life is our pres- 
ent life still, with changes only arbitrarily 
introduced ; while, in truth/ the fate of the 
evil ones is for thought only, and no imagi- 
native presentation is trustworthy. 

The endeavor has been made to interpret 
the Divine Comedia of Dante as symbolical, 
on the ground that a mind so keen and 
capacious as his could not be content with 
views so crass of the future life, if the poem 
were intended to be literally interpreted. 
There is probably truth in this, and the 
poem must not be taken to express Dante's 
deliberate theologic opinion. But his scien- 
tific knowledge was so meagre that it is 
questionable whether he was able to eman- 
cipate himself from the erroneous views of 
his time, and these must necessarily have 
affected his philosophic system. It is doubt- 
ful, then, whether the poem was intended 
to symbolize any system of thought or to do 
more than illustrate and emphasize certain 
truths of the divine moral government. 
Milton, too, in dealing with similar ob- 



IMPOTEXCE OF IMAGIXATIOX. 191 

ject matter, uses imagination very freely. 
His poem would not l:»u interesting had he 
not done so. But it is questionaljle whether 
we are right in inferring his theologic opin- 
ion from this — that, for instance, he thought 
Satan what he here presents him. full of the 
possibilities of good. He would not have 
been interesting had he been made purely 
evil. It is doubtful, too. for the same rea- 
son, whether we can rightly infer from the 
poem alone. Milton's alleged Arianism. The 
conception of the Eternal Son is modified 
for the needs of the poem, to affect its pic- 
torial power. 

Poets, as such, can deal only with the 
concrete. Verse ceases to be poetry when 
it deals with the abstract. Therefore poets 
claim the right to abandon themselves very 
freely to imagination, and their philosophic 
thought cannot be accurately inferred from 
their poetic works. I have A'ery little con- 
fidence in the attemjjts so often made of late 
to read into the lines of Dante, Shakespeare, 
Milton, or Goethe laliored and reasoned 
systems of philosophy. The whole naive 
movement of the poetic mind is diverse 



192 MENS CHKISTI. 

from this, and it has to do some violence to 
itself to throw itself into the philosophic 
attitude. One power is weakened by the 
exercise of the other, and poets love their 
own the best, and cease to be poets when 
they become philosophers. Some minds, in 
which both tendencies have been in strug- 
gle, might doubtless have accomplished 
grander work had they yielded themselves 
entirely to one propensity or the other. 
Truth cannot be made explicit for thought 
by imagery, by symbolization. But sym- 
bolization may give delight, and strengthen 
faith by hinting of the noumenon veiled in 
the beautiful phenomena, and thus carry 
the mind down into the depths, so that a 
unified system comes to be divined rather 
than thought out, and one, too, in which 
the concrete still remains in all its warmth. 
Philosophy proper brings no emotion, while 
poetry brings it to the full. The one is 
cold, the other is warm ; and this heat 
sometimes dissolves error, precipitates it, 
and leaves the purer light. In this work 
imagination is the dearest and most satisfy- 
ing power that the human being possesses. 



RIGHT USE OF IMAGINATION. 193 

Let me now speak, and with necessaiy 
brevity, yet with reluctance to decline a 
subject so fascinating, of some of its uses. 

Much has been said from time to time of 
the use of imagination in scientific investi- 
gation, and I remember to have read years 
ago an article by Professor Tyndall upon 
this very thesis. I am inclined to think, 
however, that to maintain this position the 
word may have been used wrongly or ap- 
plied too extensively. 

In accumulating the facts concerning the 
material universe which are to be explained, 
memory and imagination have, of course, 
been busy, and by the latter power they 
are held and retained in their aggregation 
or apparent integrity. But in the endeavor 
to discover their fundamental law, or to 
unify them, a provisional or conjectural 
theory is supplied by the mind, which may 
prove inadequate to explain the whole, or 
may do so partially. This is not drawn 
directly from the special facts themselves, 
but is suggested spontaneously, or possibly 
from a larger induction, whose extent over- 
laps the present material, yet which does 



194 MENS CHKISTI. 

not come at the time into distinct mental 
vision. An illustration of this is the Atomic 
theory, which serves provisionally to connect 
the facts, and enables many useful conclusions 
to be drawn, making of chemistry a pro- 
gressive, comparatively clear, and practical 
science ; yet whose failure to account for 
other facts throws again the theory into 
suspicion, and forbids mental rest ; and thus 
it is not held as the absolute truth. But 
indeed the interposition of this or any other 
theory is not the work of imagination, 
which deals only with the actual concrete, 
or with ideal recombinations of the same. 
It is rather the work of pure thought, in 
which the scientific mind becomes phil- 
sophic in spite of itself. It is a tenta- 
tive movement toward the discovery of a 
First Principle. It is derived rather from 
the mystical elements of our complex be- 
ing, — springs from its predispositions, and a 
more or less profound sinking into their 
depths. It comes up thus from the depths 
so spontaneously as to seem an intuition or 
a revelation. But no sooner has this law 
been supplied by pure thought than im- 



RIGHT USE OF IMAGINATION. 195 

agination seizes it at once, and busies 
itself with its application and constructs 
its universe accordingly. It magnifies the 
invisible, intangible atoms into something, 
which the senses, were they sharp enough, 
might lay hold of, and thus only follows 
the guidance of pure thought, which again 
has only followed the innate predispositions 
implied in the creative idea. 

All the concretes in the universe, in 
their integrity, or their elements, are the 
proper food for imagination. It may deal 
with the material as determined by the 
spiritual, although with the abstract spir- 
itual it can do nothing. The mind only 
possesses all that comes within the compass 
of the intuitions of the senses, for all its 
uses, its truth, and its beaut}^, by virtue of 
imagination. This is the mediating pas- 
sagev/ay between these and all human activ- 
ity. Every human being of necessity uses 
it, though with greatly variant degrees of 
power or vividness. Its activity is alwa3^s 
emotion, sometimes distressing, but ordi- 
narily delightful. The emotions of beauty 
and sublimity are simply its activity — the 



196 MENS CHRISTI. 

soul thus rejoicing in its power to infuse 
itself into, to live in the life of that which 
it contemplates — wherein is the coalescence 
of its own freedom with the divine liberty. 
The emotion of the beautiful is simply the 
recognition that the movement of the uni- 
verse is free and not necessitated, except by 
the self-necessitation of love. In human 
experience all enthusiasm and its resultant 
activity come from the unusual power and 
vividness of this faculty. Thus it enlarges 
and enriches the whole sphere of life, 
which, on the other hand, is narrowed and 
impoverished by its feebleness. 

Into the religious life, into the contem- 
plation of Christian truth, its activity may 
be legitimately carried. Heaven, as a com- 
monwealth of holy souls, of glorified bodies, 
with a fluent and subservient environment, 
is a field into which it may safely venture 
and expatiate. By dwelling upon the 
rational satisfaction, the supreme beauty of 
this presentation, it may strengthen the 
loving and sacrificial disposition and harden 
the spiritual fibre. 

Into Gehenna it is dangerous for it to 



RIGHT USE OF IMAGINxiTION. 197 

venture. There are no materials there for 
it to combine. It is the region of poverty, 
where there is no beauty nor satisfaction, 
no variety nor expansion. Imagination must 
fail here, as it fails to compass the in- 
finitely little in space, which yet the think- 
ing mind cannot deny. And even into 
Hades imagination must cautiously venture, 
for, as I have said, it is almost sure to carry 
this present world with it in such an en- 
terprise, and the result of its contemplation 
is untrustworthy. But so far as Paradise 
has any characteristics of the ultimate 
Heaven, in the loving soul and the expand- 
ing intelligence, it may furnish material 
with which imagination may profitably 
deal. Thus those who mourn departed 
ones are not forbidden to think of them 
under these limitations, and to think of 
them as the interceding heart requires. 

And especially may imagination find its 
dearest and most precious use in recalling 
for contemplation the image of Jesus 
Christ, as displayed in his career, his 
deeds, and his words. This is our human 
brother, the tender, sympathetic one, the 



198 MENS CHRISTI. 

suffering and yet the majestic one. This is 
God's manifestation of himself as loving 
and benignant, as beneficent yet severe. 
Imagination can do no better thing than to 
fasten securely in the mind, to weave this 
image into the soul's own structure. 

They ''builded better than they knew," 
perhaps, these evangelists, who so recorded 
the events of that wonderful career as to 
display so clearly that mind and heart, now 
thought as human, and now again as divine, 
but rightly, though mystically, in the union 
and coalescence of the divine and human, 
as to exhibit that character to which human 
history furnishes nothing like, and with 
such attractiveness that the deepest abyss 
of our nature is reached, and we feel our- 
selves drawn irresistibly by the tender com- 
pulsion of love, to meet this divine-human 
heart, hardly knowing, when we yield, that 
we are entering upon a pathway that leads 
endlessly upward. 

In the yielding to this supreme attraction 
the will represents, not the transient phase 
of the character, but the original constitu- 
ents of human nature, the profound pre- 



RIGHT USE OF IMAGINATION. 199 

dispositions toward the good with which 
God created us, and which through evil 
had been turned inward upon themselves, 
into discord and confusion. Imagination 
has thus enabled this easy victory of the 
divine love. And if those in whom this 
faculty is less active do still, from moral 
and mental needs, yield to the truth of 
Christ, making more of a sacrifice and put- 
ting forth more spiritual strength — this 
shows that the providence of God and the 
supplemented activity of the Holy Spirit 
have recognized these differences in human 
structure, and proportioned their environ- 
ment and their influence accordingly. These 
differences and degrees in imaginative power 
are dependent probably upon the degrees of 
fineness in the physical structure, upon 
brain-conditions merely. When the souls 
are emancipated from tliese, and subside 
into a purer consciousness, such differences 
will be equalized ; and all will be alike in 
possessing the immediate intuition. 

Yet the differences in soul structure, en- 
abling an endless variety and not a monot- 
onous sameness in the company of the holy 



200 MENS CHRISTI. 

ones, must be prolonged into the heavenly 
life itself. How to explain these and ex- 
hibit as possible different modes of activity, 
is a speculative enquiry into which I will 
not now enter. But to our present think- 
ing imagination will still be exercised, and 
acording to subjective needs, in the heav- 
enly state. The spiritual soul will still con- 
stantly objectify itself, and infuse itself 
into that which it contemplates or creates, 
into the endless concretions of the divine 
thought, or its own recombinations of the 
same, into the spiritual souls which will not 
forbid, which will freely fuse themselves 
together. 

Thus we see that hu-man imagination is 
a reflection of the divine, inasmuch as it 
is the ability of the creature to do, under 
limitations progressively removed, what God 
does — to live in and enjoy that which it 
creates. Its activity is one element of the 
evidence that man is God's image. From 
the reward of delight which its normal ac- 
tivity brings we infer that the sights and 
sounds of the material universe which bring 
this joy are not dead and passsive phenom- 



RIGHT USE OF IMAGINATION. 201 

ena, are not transitory things, but living 
and everlasting ; that God is in them, and 
his complacency in them, that they are 
his free movement and not necessitated from 
any alien source ; that their blossoming 
into that wonderful characteristic of beauty, 
which we seize and appropriate with such 
transport, is one aspect of the coalescence of 
God with his human creature ; that we, 
too, shall have unfettered power and un- 
limited resources, and that for this we were 
created. 



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